The Labor of the Mind

"This excellent new book all but overflows with unusually erudite and insightful analysis of an impressive array of interesting and important figures, notably Poullain de la Barre, Nicolas Malebranche, the marquise de Lambert, the earl of Shaftesbury, David Hume, Antoine-Léonard Thomas, Suzanne Necker, Denis Diderot, and Louise d'Épinay . . . The Labor of the Mind will take its place as an indispensable work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-centuryWestern European intellectual history." (Journal of Modern History) "A thoughtful historicist study of how men and a few women in seventeenth and eighteenth-century France, England, and Scotland construed the relationship between intelligence, gender, and work, The Labor of the Mind is a welcome example of scholarship that brings a gender-studies perspective to the often male-centric field of intellectual history . . . La Vopa's book makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate in eighteenth-century French studies surrounding the relative roles of gender, social status, and intellectual seriousness in salon culture." (Modern Philology) "[A]n impressive tour de force - the result of many years of research and reflection . . . [A] rich, subtle, and refined work, full of deep historical wisdom but devoid of any excessive display of erudition; sophisticated and precise in its analysis, clear and elegant in its writing; utterly readable and enjoyable. It is a book from which we historians of every branch of the discipline will learn precious lessons - about the past and about our craft." (Early Modern Women) "The Labor of the Mind is the most subtle and innovative study of Enlightenment thought in decades. Taking conversations rather than printed texts as his starting point, and reaching back deeply into the seventeenth century, Anthony J. La Vopa shows how male-female friendships within an aristocratic culture produced both intellectual dynamism and anxieties about the feminization of the mind. La Vopa interweaves the ideas and conversational practices of such prominent writers as David Hume and Denis Diderot with those of lesser-known figures such as Poullain de la Barre and Suzanne Necker, offering fascinating insights about these thinkers as both human beings and as makers of our modern understandings of femininity and manliness." (Suzanne Marchard, Louisiana State University) "The Labor of the Mind is a terrific book and a magisterial contribution to Enlightenment studies, to intellectual history, and especially to gender studies. Labor, as the practice of intellectual work, and gender serve as two prongs of incisive analysis running through the book. By grounding texts and ideas in the lives and experiences of the men and women who wrote them, Anthony J. La Vopa has breathed new life into the intellectual history of the eighteenth century." (Mary Terrall, University of California, Los Angeles)