Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu [ Art and Literature ]
… was perhaps the best-known salon hostess during the second half of the eighteenth century. She was a towering figure in circles promoting literary sociability, and a respected literary critic after her publication of an essay on Shakespeare … – more easily than in London, she met many of the literary men and women who would later be part of the bluestocking circles. After her husband’s death in 1775, Elizabeth Montagu took over the direction of their coal mines in Newcastle, … Her circle was gradually enlarged, including ‘a heavy complement of the aristocracy’ until ‘there were interlocking circles of the observed and their observers’. 3 Bluestocking sociability eschewed formal visits and clothes (the blue …
Assemblies | Bluestockings | Conversation | Correspondence | Friendship | Women
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