Introduction -- You will arrive at distinguished usefulness : the grounds for women's entry into public life -- The need of their genius : the rights and obligations of schooling -- Female academies are everywhere establishing : curriculum and pedagogy -- Meeting in this social way to search for truth : literary societies, reading circles, and mutual improvement associations -- The privilege of reading : women, books, and self-imagining -- Whether to make her surname More or Adams : women writing women's history -- The mind is, in a sense, its own home : gendered republicanism as lived experience -- Epilogue.