The First Essay on the Political Rights of Women: "Sur l'admission des femmes au droit de Cité" (On the Admission of Women to the Rights of Citizenship)

This Illustrated Edition features: • 11 historical portraits and illustrations relevant to the text • Portraits of Condorcet, Émilie du Châtelet, Catherine the Great, Princesse des Ursins, Marie de Gournay, John Stuart Mill, and Dr. Alice Vickery • Period suffragette imagery and meeting illustrations • Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery's complete 1893 translation with her original preface and remarks • New editorial colophon with audiobook recording details

In 1790, while the French Revolution was busy redefining who counted as a citizen, the Marquis de Condorcet raised a hand and asked, "why are we not including women?"

Condorcet was a voice of the Establishment. He was a mathematician, a philosopher, and a member of the Académie Française. He asked a quite logical question: if women pay taxes, own businesses, are literate contributors to society, and have at least some small capacity for independent thought, perhaps we could briefly consider the terrifying notion of including them in the definition of citizenship?

This translation by Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery was published in 1912—over a century later—as ammunition for the British suffrage movement. Her preface is as sharp as the essay itself; she wanted to know why the arguments against women's rights hadn't really evolved in 120 years.

Now, Tarah Wheeler narrates the first English-language audiobook version, and has the same exact question eleven decades after Dr. Drysdale-Vickery's translation.