The impact and legacy of The ladies' diary (1704-1840) : a women's declaration

It was in this period of concern and inquiry in 1977 that I first came across
mention of The Ladies’ Diary: or The Woman’s Almanack, a British eighteenth-
and nineteenth-century journal that encouraged and promoted mathematics for
women. This periodical was the subject of an article by Teri Perl in the Math-
ematics Teacher, a journal dedicated to mathematics teaching, published by the
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.3 The concept of proper English
ladies, in the mold of Jane Austen’s or the Brontë sisters’ heroines, doing mathe-
matics and revealing it for the public review in this period of history was fascinat-
ing. I knew that British society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had
strict codes of conduct and expectations for their young ladies that distinctively
did not include involvement in mathematics and science.