The Reception of Women Letter-Writers in the Correspondence of John Locke (1632–1704).

Recently, scholars have begun to use network analysis to explore women's participation in correspondence networks. One such correspondence with a distinct presence of women letter-writers is that of the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), who corresponded with thirty-five different women, including the philosopher Damaris Masham (1659–1708), and his cousin Mary Clarke (c. 1656–c. 1705). Through the lens of citation and co-citation analysis, this essay explores the reception of the women letter-writers in Locke's correspondence, arguing that shifting focus onto the reception of women facilitates a re-centering of these women's activities even at moments that their own letters are no longer extant, examining the connections between how women letter-writers represent themselves and how they are represented by the wider network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]