Marie de Gournay

Writer, Editor & Feminist

(1565 – 1645) · Western Europe

French writer and editor born in 1565, one of the earliest feminist thinkers of the European Renaissance. She was Montaigne's adopted daughter and literary executor, producing authoritative editions of his Essais. Her own treatises, including The Equality of Men and Women, argued for women's intellectual and spiritual equality on philosophical grounds.