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The Bluestockings

A History of the First Women's Movement

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

One of the New York Times' 100 Notable Books of 2024
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
One of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024

An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life for themselves in both mind and spirit.

In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society.

In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women. Elizabeth Montagu established one of the most famous salons of the Bluestocking movement, with everyone from royalty to revolutionaries clamoring for an invitation to attend. Her younger sister, Sarah Scott, imagined a female-run society and created a women's commune. Meanwhile, Hester Thrale, who also had a salon, saved her husband's brewery from bankruptcy and, after being widowed, married a man she loved—Italian, Catholic, and not of her social class. Other women made a name for themselves through their publications, including Catharine Macaulay, author of an eight-volume history of England, and Frances Burney, author of the audacious novel Evelina.

In elegant prose, Gibson reveals the close and complicated relationships between these women, how they supported and admired each other, and how they sometimes judged and exploited one another. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives. With moving stories and keen insight, The Bluestockings uncovers how a group of remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of their male-dominated world that society was not yet ready to hear.

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    • Library Journal

      February 1, 2024

      Historian Gibson (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral?) offers a trade history of the 18th-century Bluestockings movement, a group of women who created intellectual lives for themselves and advocated for a broader role for all women. The Bluestockings pushed for women to be educated and were part of the long fight to unravel the patriarchy. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      May 15, 2024
      A lively group portrait of 18th-century Englishwomen who claimed a place for themselves in the nation's intellectual life. Most of these "bluestockings" (not a pejorative term until much later) were aristocrats, privileged enough to have leisure time to devote to reading and writing. Working-class poet Ann Yearsley, wife of a yeoman who had fallen on hard times, and playwright/religious author Hannah More, middle-class daughter of a schoolteacher, were the exceptions--and More's patronizing treatment of Yearsley demonstrated that the bluestockings may have defied intellectual restrictions but did not question the class system. Gibson, the author of The Spirit of Inquiry, begins with Elizabeth Montagu, whose salon on Hill Street in London was a favored gathering place of intellectual women, equaled in brilliance only by Hester Thrale's salon, which orbited around literary lion Samuel Johnson. Thrale and Montagu were friends, and most women in their elite orbit socialized with both, among them classicist Elizabeth Carter and Hester Mulso Chapone, who gained early fame for cautiously feminist letters written to Samuel Richardson in defense of a woman's right to choose a husband. Gibson offers vivid sketches of all these women, and many others, in a loosely structured narrative that first introduces Montagu and other key players, then uses individual lives to explore common aspects of all female experience in chapters devoted to marriage, motherhood, friendship, and love, with a final chapter showing how some bluestockings maneuvered through social strictures to gain independence. The author does not scant the difficulties these women faced; the account of Thrale's constant pregnancies (15 in 16 years) and the frequent deaths of her children (only three remained alive in 1776) is particularly grim. The author's engaging account honors the determination and charm with which her subjects seized as much freedom as society would allow them. Vivid popular history illuminating some neglected feminist pioneers.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Library Journal

      June 28, 2024

      Historian Gibson (The Spirit of Inquiry) presents the fascinating history of the Bluestockings, a group of 18th-century English women who championed women's rights. Her book fully demonstrates how women were permitted few liberties. For example, they couldn't own land and had little to no choice in marriage or childbearing. Even their hobbies--reading, for example, which was thought to damage their wombs and brains--were controlled by the men in their lives. The Bluestockings dared to create a space for women to use their intellect and share their views freely. Despite their collective cause and gatherings, the women themselves were often at odds with one another, thwarting their individual and group success. Gibson's book sets itself apart in how it opens up these complicated relationships to readers by highlighting the times when the women supported and admired one another while also describing some of the moments when they took advantage of and judged each other's decisions. VERDICT An engaging, well researched title. Readers awaiting the next installment of Bridgerton will especially be drawn to this title.--Mattie Cook

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

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