Josefa Amar y Borbón

Josefa Amar y Borbón (1749–1833) was a Spanish feminist writer of the Enlightenment period. She was part of the first generation of European feminists.

Life Amar was Aragonese by birth, born in 1749 in Saragossa. When she was five years old, her father became a court physician and family moved to Madrid, where she was educated. This allowed her to acquire self-taught education with proficiency in the sciences, as well as in classical and modern European languages and literatures.

Translations Amar was well versed in Greek, Latin, French, English and Italian.

Writing In the 1780s, she began publishing essays and treatises in three broad categories: science and medicine, study of letters and humanities, and combatting superstition. Her writing also appeared in Memorial Literario. and was a proponent of applying common Enlightenment ideas of just government (following Locke, Montesquieu and Rousseau) to the situation of women.