23 MAY 1914, Page 27

- Feminist Writers of the Seventeenth Century. By S. A.

Richards. (David Nutt. 5s. net.)—The habit of publishing a graduand'a thesis is commoner in American than in English 'niversities. Thissomewbat thin little book was approved as such a thesis for the London M.A. Mr. Richards shows that we must look to France of the seventeenth century for the birth of the-Modern feminist movement. It is rather curious to note that a mere man was its nursing father—Francois Poulain de la Barre—to whose forgotten book on the equality ,of the sexes Mr. Richards devotes an interesting chapter. Poulain held that there was no sex-difference- in minds: We doubt it.