“A Lady’s” Lecture Series Advertisement

This advertisement appeared in the April 2, 1787, issue of Philadelphia’s Independent Gazetteer. The headline reads “A Lady proposes to read A Course of Lectures on Language, Eloquence, Poetry, Taste, and Criticism.” The woman posting the advertisement, Elizabeth Harriot Barons O’Connor, had run a boarding school for young women in New York City in 1786 and was hoping to continue her work as a female intellectual in Philadelphia. She began her lecture series in May 1787, and George Washington attended her lecture on May 18.