Introduction

Abstract

Separated by hundreds of years and situated in different geographical locations, these women’s experiences resonate with shared anxieties and hopes. Both women found themselves constrained by social expectations of their sexual behaviour and by the corporeal reality of their pregnancies, unable to move unproblematically into suitable marriages. Leaving aside the authenticity of either letter, both women sought advice, and perhaps solace, from the writers and readers of a magazine, Athenian Oracle in 1710 and Woman’s Way in 1969. Although working on disparate bodies of literature, various conversations about our research in our shared office led us to repeatedly find similarities in the social conventions, sexual knowledge, and emotional responses to the reproductive bodies of the historical women we studied. Discussions about these continuities, and discontinuities, subsequently prompted us to discuss the relative lack of comparative research in the history of reproduction. This gave rise to a conference we organised at the University of Hertfordshire in summer 2014.