Elizabeth (Robinson) Montagu [ Art and Literature ]
… 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 refuting Voltaire’s … which did not involve the usual card games but were based on literary (not political) conversation. Bluestocking sociability was based on the advance of politeness as extolled for instance by David Hume in ‘Of Refinement in the Arts’: … of the aristocracy’ until ‘there were interlocking circles of the observed and their observers’. 3 Bluestocking sociability eschewed formal visits and clothes (the blue stockings being considered to stand for an informal dress code), …
Assemblies | Bluestockings | Conversation | Correspondence | Friendship | Women
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