James Fordyce (1720-1796) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and popular society preacher, who drew large crowds to his sermons at Monkwell Street in London. In 1765 he published Sermons for Young Women, a book of pious and moral advice. He included conventional criticisms of women for their interest in fashion, the theatre, balls and card-playing, and exhorted them not to be self-confident or opinionated, but to display modesty and frailty at all times. He declared that the destiny of women is to be mothers and companions to their husbands, and for this they should remain in domestic confinement. He praised women for their greater sensibility but advised them to avoid developing their intellects, for fear this should make them less attractive to men. He did, however, make an exception for one unnamed lady, most likely Elizabeth Carter, who whilst possessing “an extensive knowledge in philosophy and languages ancient and modern, with some portion of poetical genius, and a considerable degree of literary fame, has the sense and worth to join every domestic quality that can adorn a woman in her situation.” Fordyce’s Sermons was very popular, going into six editions in the first year of publication and continuing to be reprinted into the 1900s; it was for a long time one of the most popular books for well-intentioned friends or relatives to give to young ladies. In his 1775 play The Rivals, Sheridan portrayed the empty-headed Lydia Languish, on hearing her guardian Mrs Malaprop coming up the stairs, hastily throwing down the novels she has been and laying open a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons on the table. The book also appeared in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice, where Mr Bennet mischievously asks Mr Collins to read it to the family after dinner, causing a rude interruption from the flighty Lydia. Fordyce’s Sermons was one of the works criticised by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Women, on the grounds that it encouraged female helplessness and insipidity.