Search

… female authors to tackle political issues, a field considered to be inappropriate in the education of eighteenth-century women. The revolutionary decade intensified the politicisation of sociability in travel narratives as the formation of … form of the government. Practices > Reading & Writing Practices > Mobility Keywords Education French Revolution Travel Women In her preface to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters Written, during her Travels in Europe, Asia and Africa … (‘customs and manners’) but also as a means (‘conversation’) of acquiring a more unbiased knowledge of the countries women visited. Lady Montagu, for instance, describes her own encounter with Turkish sociable practices to debunk the …

… of the long eighteenth century offers abundant portraits of female friendship as a frequent form of sociability among women – sometimes sentimentalised as true spiritual companionship between pure and innocent souls, sometimes demonised as … desire. As opposed to men’s friendships, which centred on socialising in the public sphere, forms of attachment among women were associated with the intimate and the private. Whether it is through the refinement of romantic odes to female … of lesbian desire, fictional portraits of female friendship in the long eighteenth century seem to have provided women with the intellectual stimulus, the emotional support and the spiritual fulfilment that was often missing in their …

… of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 20 Abstract From the mid-seventeenth century until the late nineteenth century, women used tie-on pockets to carry and keep their possessions at hand. Independent from the rest of their clothing, these often capacious pockets were tied around the waist and worn under the petticoat by women of all classes. This short article proposes to see tie-on pockets and their contents as means to explore female … materialise bonds between female friends and kin. Objects > Clothing & Fashion Keywords Dress Fashion Friendship Gaming Women When a lady was attacked in London in 1754, her pockets contained ‘among other things’: ‘a small round …

… saw a surge of discourses on beauty, establishing aesthetic, moral, and social trends. Through these commentaries and women’s increasing social interaction, beauty’s idealised physical features - symmetry, fair skin and rosy cheeks - came … an aesthetic and behavioural expectation, used to advocate and challenge established moral virtues, cultural beliefs and women’s self-creation. Concepts > Taste & Manners Keywords Aesthetics Beauty Conduct Femininity Manners Women ‘Female beauty’, wrote Oliver Goldsmith in  An History of the Earth  (1776), ‘is always seen to improve about the …

… country . People > Aristocracy People > Art and Literature Keywords Bluestockings Conversation Correspondence Politics Women Born in 1719, Frances Evelyn Glanville was a distant relative of diarist John Evelyn, and – via her mother, also … was intimate mixing among friends. While hosting public days was one of the socio-political duties of the summer for women from politically active aristocratic families, fashionable women in London often opened their homes on designated days or evenings during the parliamentary season. 3 3 . Elaine …

… the Restoration. People > Art and Literature People > Travel Keywords Correspondence France French Revolution Politics Women Helen Maria Williams (1761-1827) showed a sustained appetence for literary and political circles. She frequented … in the Parisian cafés of 1791 by emphasising the importance of the female presence in French social practices: ‘Women, as well as men, are admitted to these coffee-houses; for the English idea of finding ease, comfort or felicity, in societies where women are excluded, never enters into the imagination of a Frenchman’, Letters from France Containing Many New Anecdotes …