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The first academic and interdisciplinary volume exploring bluestocking portraiture, performance and patronage in eighteenth-century Britain, opening vistas for future scholarship.
Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.
This Element proposes to relate the eighteenth-century world of travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon. It locates eminent British travellers and explorers in the female-presided intellectual space and examines their multifaceted interaction with the bluestockings between 1760 and 1799. The study shows how the bluestockings acquired knowledge of the world through reading, discussing, writing and collecting travel accounts. It explores the 'social life' of manuscript and printed travel texts in the circle, their popularity and impact on the bluestockings. This Element builds upon the body of evidence provided by their published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and private library catalogues.
The conversation parties of the bluestockings, held to debate contemporary ideas in eighteenth-century Britain, were vital in encouraging female artistic achievement. The bluestockings promoted links between learning and virtue in the public imagination, inventing a new kind of informal sociability that combined the life of the senses with that of the mind. This collection of essays, by leading scholars in the fields of literature, history and art history, provides an interdisciplinary treatment of bluestocking culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first academic volume to concentrate on the rich visual and material culture that surrounded and supported the bluestocking project, from formal portraits and sculptures to commercially reproduced prints. By the early twentieth century, the term 'bluestocking' came to signify a dull and dowdy intellectual woman, but the original bluestockings inhabited a world in which brilliance was valued at every level and women were encouraged to shine and even dazzle.
The public and private spheres are conceived to be separate and complementary; taking the usefulness of this model as a focus, these essays ask how the spheres interpenetrate.
Compiles 70 of the key terms most frequently used or discussed by authors of the Romantic period – and most often deliberated by critics and literary historians of the era. Offers an indispensable resource for understanding the ideas and differing interpretations that shaped the Romantic period Includes keywords spanning Abolition and Allegory, through Madness and Monsters, to Vision and Vampires Features in-depth descriptions of each entry's direct meaning and connotations in relation to its usage and thought in literary culture Provides deep insights into the political, social, and cultural climate of one of the most expressive periods of Western literary history Draws on the author’s extensive experience of teaching, lecturing, and writing on Romantic literature
This first in-depth study of women’s politeness examines the complex relationship individuals had with the discursive ideals of polite femininity. Contextualising women’s autobiographical writings (journals and letters) with a wide range of eighteenth-century printed didactic material, it analyses the tensions between politeness discourse which aimed to regulate acceptable feminine identities and women’s possibilities to resist this disciplinary regime. Ylivuori focuses on the central role the female body played as both the means through which individuals actively fashioned themselves as polite and feminine, and the supposedly truthful expression of their inner status of polite femininity.
The Spiritual Lives and Manuscript Cultures of Eighteenth-Century English Women explores the vital and unexplored ways in which women's life writings acted to undergird, guide, and indeed shape religious communities. Through an exploration of various significant but understudied personal relationships- including mentorship by older women, spiritual friendship, and care for nonbiological children-the book demonstrates the multiple ways in which women were active in writing religious communities. The women discussed here belonged to communities that habitually communicated through personal writing. At the same time, their acts of writing were creative acts, powerful to build and shape religious communities: these women wrote religious community. The book consists of a series of interweaving case studies and focuses on Catherine Talbot (1721-70), Anne Steele (1717-78), and Ann Bolton (1743-1822), and on their literary interactions with friends and family. Considered together, these subjects and sources allow comparison across denomination, for Talbot was Anglican, Steele a Baptist, and Bolton a Methodist. Further, it considers women's life writings as spiritual legacy, as manuscripts were preserved by female friends and family members and continued to function in religious communities after the death of their authors. Various strands of enquiry weave through the book: questions of gender and religion, themselves inflected by denomination; themes related to life writings and manuscript cultures; and the interplay between the writer as individual and her relationships and communal affiliations. The result is a variegated and highly textured account of eighteenth-century women's spiritual and writing lives.
An enduring myth of Georgian architecture is that it was purely the pursuit of male architects and their wealthy male patrons. History states that it was men who owned grand estates and houses, who commissioned famous architects, and who embarked upon elaborate architectural schemes. Hidden Patrons dismantles this myth - revealing instead that women were at the heart of the architectural patronage of the day, exerting far more influence and agency than has previously been recognised. Architectural drawing and design, discourse, and patronage were interests shared by many women in the eighteenth century. Far from being the preserve of elite men, architecture was a passion shared by both sexes, intellectually and practically, as long as they possessed sufficient wealth and autonomy. In an accessible, readable account, Hidden Patrons uncovers the role of women as important patrons and designers of architecture and interiors in eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. Exploring country houses, Georgian townhouses, villas, estates, and gardens, it analyses female patronage from across the architectural spectrum, and examines the work of a range of pioneering women from grand duchesses to businesswomen to lowly courtesans. Re-examining well-known Georgian masterpieces alongside lesser-known architectural gems, Hidden Patrons unearths unseen archival material to provide a fascinating new view of the role of women in the architecture of the Georgian era.
Between 1750 and 1857, westward-bound Central and South Asian travelers connected imperial Britain to Persian Indo-Eurasia by performing queer masculinities.
