A Bluestocking was a mid C18th intellectual woman with strong scholarly or literary interests. A group was founded to discuss the arts, started by two high society ladies in Britain: heiress Elizabeth Montagu (1718–1800) and intellectual Elizabeth Vesey (c1715–91). Mrs Vesey organised the first functions in Bath. It wasn’t until she moved to London that any competitiveness developed between them.
Portraits of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo (above)
by Richard Samuel, 1778 132 x 155 cm, Nat Portrait Gall
There were challenging female brains in those early gatherings, more than equal to male intelligence, including linguist-classicist Elizabeth Carter, novelist Fanny Burney, courtier-diarist Mary Hamilton, Hester Chapone, Mary Monckton and playwright and anti-slavery campaigner Hannah More. Montagu patronised a number of authors, including Anna Barbauld, Sarah Fielding, James Beattie and Anna Williams. Samuel Johnson's hostess, Hester Thrale, was also an occasional visitor to Hill Street. Elizabeth Montagu was not the dominant blue stocking personality, but she was the woman of the greatest means. It was her house and power that made the society possible.
Here is a story I DID know. When Vesey invited the learned Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–71) to one of her parties, he declined because he lacked appropriate dress. So she told him to come in the ordinary blue worsted stockings he was wearing. He agreed, and Bluestocking society became the group’s nickname. The bluestocking women, also in their ordinary blue woollen legwear, “enjoyed society in undress”; it created informality and equalitarianism at their salons.
But the Venetians used blue stockings first. In the 1400s they had an elite salon called della calza for their fancy leg wear. And the Parisian Bas Bleu-bluestocking label emerged in the 1500s for groups of French literary women. So the Georgians were clearly quoting a European heritage of learned gatherings in their name.
And another thing. The Society’s members were not all wealthy or aristocratic. Novelist Fanny Burney worked as Keeper of the Robes for Queen Charlotte. Poet-essayist Anna Laetitia Barbauld had worked as a housekeeper at Palgrave Academy Suffolk. Hester Chapone was the writer daughter of a farmer who later married a solicitor. By 1770, her home on Hill St London had become the premiere salon.
Nonetheless these women held salons to which they invited men of letters, and members of the aristocracy with literary interests: David Garrick, Earl of Bath, Lord Lyttleton, man of letters Horace Walpole, artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, philosopher Edmund Burke, author Dr Samuel Johnson and biographer James Boswell.
The original bluestocking salons launched similar social gatherings across London and then across Britain. Poet-playwright Hannah More published her poem Bas Bleu Conversation in 1786, in homage to the soirees. Her use of “bas bleu” in the title was a nod to the scholarship of the circle. The group was a support network for women scholars and artists i.e an informal university.
Luckily the patrician bluestockings packaged their “female social rebellion” as an elegant balance between fashion and learning. The first bluestockings were seen as Georgian ideals of feminine sophistication and virtue. The artist Richard Samuel (see above) painted the original Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo in 1778, hoping to capture the public imagination. So successful was his ploy that it became a popular print, depicting the women sacrificing to the goddess Britannia in lieu of Apollo. NB the print featured in a famous pocket diary in 1778, to inspire women to write down their own musings.
At first it was a great publicity campaign, sweeping in the idea of stylish female learning at a time when women had no rights to money or property, and were effectively a servant class to men.
Then, as the American War of Independence (1775–83) and the French Revolution (1789-99) made the idea of egalitarian learning more dangerous than sexy in the late C18th, the bluestockings faced attacks. Few people wanted these women forgetting their rightful place. Montagu was satirised by Lord Byron as the ridiculous Lady Bluebottle in his 1821 Literary Eclogue. Byron laughed at best-selling poetess Felicia Dorothea Hemans, suggesting she should ‘knit bluestockings instead of wearing them.’
Criticism
Admiral Edward Boscawen scorned his wife’s literary pretensions. Mrs Frances Evelyn Boscawen neé Glanville had been a popular Blue Stockings Society hostess and elegant letter writer. Thomas Rowlandson’s 1815 cartoon “Breaking Up of the Blue Stocking Club” depicted screaming harridans attacking each other, grabbing hair and ripping clothes, with tea cups flying. And French satirical cartoonist Honoré Daumier attacked across the Channel with his etchings of grotesque women scholars, Les Bas Bleus, and targeted liberated femmes eg novelist George Sand.
But it wasn’t only savage men. Bluestocking Fanny Burney wrote her first play The Witlings about pretentious women patrons of the arts. The satire was to be staged by Sheridan at Drury Lane, but she withdrew it before it got her into trouble with Montagu. Depictions of unfeminine bluestockings became more sinister eg the character of mannish feminist Harriet Freke was based on radical writer Mary Wollstonecraft, in Maria Edgeworth’s 1811 novel Belinda.
Not surprisingly it was sex that damaged the bluestockings in the end. Catharine Macaulay’s radical 8-volume History of England, arguing for democratic republic to replace monarchy, made the Establishment bring her down. But she was ridiculed for her scandalous private life filled with inappropriate partners!
![]()
Macauley’s scandalous sexual antics weren’t innocent; they were as political a statement as her writing. She considered it an outrage that virtue in a woman meant only one thing: chastity. Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, agreed with her, and lived out her own life with even less approval. Imagine her radicalism, passionate female friendships, love affairs, illegitimate child and suicide attempts. Far from embracing her as a role model, C19th suffragettes felt obliged to ignore her.
Mostly the participants discussed books and ideas, but sometimes they debated political controversies! Perhaps it was too much when women went from national treasures to dangerous rebels. Within a decade, bluestocking gatherings launched radical political thinkers who spoke out ahead of their time for the equality, liberty and social justice. Women who consequently got themselves ostracised and denigrated fuelled the backlash that transformed the label bluestocking from an affectionate nickname into an insult.
Luckily the patrician bluestockings packaged their “female social rebellion” as an elegant balance between fashion and learning. The first bluestockings were seen as Georgian ideals of feminine sophistication and virtue. The artist Richard Samuel (see above) painted the original Portraits in the Characters of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo in 1778, hoping to capture the public imagination. So successful was his ploy that it became a popular print, depicting the women sacrificing to the goddess Britannia in lieu of Apollo. NB the print featured in a famous pocket diary in 1778, to inspire women to write down their own musings.
At first it was a great publicity campaign, sweeping in the idea of stylish female learning at a time when women had no rights to money or property, and were effectively a servant class to men.
Then, as the American War of Independence (1775–83) and the French Revolution (1789-99) made the idea of egalitarian learning more dangerous than sexy in the late C18th, the bluestockings faced attacks. Few people wanted these women forgetting their rightful place. Montagu was satirised by Lord Byron as the ridiculous Lady Bluebottle in his 1821 Literary Eclogue. Byron laughed at best-selling poetess Felicia Dorothea Hemans, suggesting she should ‘knit bluestockings instead of wearing them.’
Criticism
Admiral Edward Boscawen scorned his wife’s literary pretensions. Mrs Frances Evelyn Boscawen neé Glanville had been a popular Blue Stockings Society hostess and elegant letter writer. Thomas Rowlandson’s 1815 cartoon “Breaking Up of the Blue Stocking Club” depicted screaming harridans attacking each other, grabbing hair and ripping clothes, with tea cups flying. And French satirical cartoonist Honoré Daumier attacked across the Channel with his etchings of grotesque women scholars, Les Bas Bleus, and targeted liberated femmes eg novelist George Sand.
But it wasn’t only savage men. Bluestocking Fanny Burney wrote her first play The Witlings about pretentious women patrons of the arts. The satire was to be staged by Sheridan at Drury Lane, but she withdrew it before it got her into trouble with Montagu. Depictions of unfeminine bluestockings became more sinister eg the character of mannish feminist Harriet Freke was based on radical writer Mary Wollstonecraft, in Maria Edgeworth’s 1811 novel Belinda.
Not surprisingly it was sex that damaged the bluestockings in the end. Catharine Macaulay’s radical 8-volume History of England, arguing for democratic republic to replace monarchy, made the Establishment bring her down. But she was ridiculed for her scandalous private life filled with inappropriate partners!
Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage 1730–1830
by Elizabeth Eger (ed)
Macauley’s scandalous sexual antics weren’t innocent; they were as political a statement as her writing. She considered it an outrage that virtue in a woman meant only one thing: chastity. Mary Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, agreed with her, and lived out her own life with even less approval. Imagine her radicalism, passionate female friendships, love affairs, illegitimate child and suicide attempts. Far from embracing her as a role model, C19th suffragettes felt obliged to ignore her.
Mostly the participants discussed books and ideas, but sometimes they debated political controversies! Perhaps it was too much when women went from national treasures to dangerous rebels. Within a decade, bluestocking gatherings launched radical political thinkers who spoke out ahead of their time for the equality, liberty and social justice. Women who consequently got themselves ostracised and denigrated fuelled the backlash that transformed the label bluestocking from an affectionate nickname into an insult.
Enjoy Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage 1730–1830 by Elizabeth Eger ed, Cambridge UP, 2013. And thank you to The Bluestockings Circle at the National Portrait Gallery.