Elizabeth Elstob, the "Saxon Nymph", was a pioneering scholar of Anglo-Saxon. She was the first person to publish a grammar of Old English written in modern English.

Mary Astell was an English protofeminist writer, philosopher, and rhetorician who advocated for equal educational opportunities for women. Astell is primarily remembered as one of England's inaugural advocates for women's rights and some commentators consider her to have been "the first English feminist."