The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement

by Susannah Gibson

An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life of the mind and spirit for themselves. In eighteenth-century England, a woman who was an intellectual, read constantly, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. But the Bluestockings did something 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. They questioned the traditional womanly roles of wife, mother, and caregiver. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the extraordinary lives of these pioneering women, from Elizabeth Montagu, who established a salon that had everyone in society clamoring for an invitation, and her sister Sarah Scott, who set up a female utopian community, to Fanny Burney, the audacious novelist, and Catharine Macaulay, the prestigious English historian. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives.  The Bluestockings uncovers how these remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of the patriarchy the world was not yet ready to hear. 40 illustrations

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Feminism, Biography, 18th Century, Historical, Politics

352 pages, Hardcover

First published July 23, 2024

About the author

Dr Susannah Gibson is an Affiliated Scholar of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She holds a Ph.D. from Cambridge on the history of the life sciences of the eighteenth century, a master’s degree in the history of nineteenth-century science, and a bachelor’s degree in experimental physics.

Reviews

[this_eel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’ll consider myself a somewhat rare breed in the US, as a person who has read extensively about and from the women writers of the English 18th century. I love the Bluestockings! They’ve been a special interest of mine for well over a decade. They’re not exactly in vogue here in the US, and as far as I can tell haven’t been since they were alive. What a lonely life I lead. For this reason, I was thrilled to see this book on the shelves. I will give THE BLUESTOCKINGS its props up front: bringing obsession and excitement regarding the Bluestockings and their literary output to a US market is something I appreciate, and Gibson certainly has obsession and excitement. I will also say that reading this book reignited my love for the era, and my particular affection for a few of the writers she mentions, as well as teaching me about the lives of several women I knew less about. I have a nice fat reading list to work on now, and I am excited to re-immerse myself in a body of literature I haven’t made time for in a while.

That said, as a book this suffers immensely from a few directions. First, and most superficially, I have to ask: is Norton DEMANDING that every woman who writes about women and publishes with them give their books some sort of modern feminist framework? This is the second Norton book I’ve read this year that does this and runs into trouble over it.

(The other book was Heroine of a Thousand Faces by Maria Tatar, which I will be clear is a significantly worse book than this one because of its venomous, offensive, and self-defeating relationship with gender, but relevantly it fails to adhere to its thesis because its thesis is impossible in a way that’s similar to the one posited by Gibson’s title.)

“A history of the first women’s movement” is the hook teased in the subtitle of THE BLUESTOCKINGS, but here are the issues with this: first of all, Gibson doesn’t really do anything with this premise (because to do so requires analysis and argument, which as I’ll discuss is not the strength of this book), and secondly…she literally can’t. The Bluestockings weren’t anything like what the modern political connotation of “movement” implies. They held a wide variety of political feelings, and most of them did not act or attempt to act in the political sphere. While many of them made incisive critiques of their society in their writing, they were not a politically coherent or activist collective in any way. Pretending you can neatly line them up in an unbroken progressive line from Bluestocking to 2024 feminism isn’t helpful or credible. So let’s tackle and discard this right away: “the first women’s movement” isn’t real and at no point does the book make a case for it being real.

The far bigger problem with the book isn’t a marketing gaffe; it is that as a work of history writing, it fails pretty abysmally. Essentially, this is not history: it’s a book report.

Gibson has read extensively for this project, clearly diving deep into both the literary works of her subjects and their available personal correspondence, and she’s obviously read a fair amount of secondary literature as well. That’s great, and if what you want is a rote summary of what the primary sources say, you’ll do all right. We will give her a B or maybe a B+ for creduously summarizing source texts a la a young student. Because of this tendency to just write down anything the source texts say, she often abandoned the arc of her historical narrative in favor of the minutiae, so that you will frequently be treated to an “and then she said and then he said and this is the wig she wore, and it was the 23rd of April, when the flowers she had planted were blooming” detailed replay of someone’s diary. Personally, I do find this stuff interesting, because I like gossip. But it mostly makes me wish I had access to the archives that Gibson did. It doesn’t convince me of her particular skill as a storyteller or scholar.

This is excruciatingly more evident at certain points of the book, where she absolutely refuses to have an editorial framework, historian’s viewpoint, or corrective lens. Imagine, if you will, a book written in the 2020s about the 18th century which at MULTIPLE POINTS agrees with the primary text that says bleeding people is a productive form of medicine. This isn’t just “they were bled and also, luckily did improve and not die,” but “bleeding them definitely made them better, thank you to the careful blood-draining ministrations of the scientifically correct doctor.” She is the most dutiful messenger alive, not only reporting the original text, but merrily agreeing with deeply outdated science. Imagine, if you will, a book written in the 2020s that cheerfully agrees that, once a mom knew why her son had been beaten at school, we could all agree he deserved it. Imagine saying without question that it’s the spas at Bath that definitely cured so-and-so, rather than even the possibility that time, an immune system, rest and luck played any roles?

Essentially and at all points, Gibson refuses to interpret anything she’s reading. Analysis appears to be a great allergen for her, so it simply doesn’t happen even at bogglingly obvious moments. This includes her baffling decision to believe that bleeding, etc., just worked super well back then, but it also makes her a sometimes terrible interpreter of the characters she’s reporting on. One moment that I found particularly funny involved Samuel Johson. Johnson, known for writing a dictionary and also for being the central obsession of biographer James Boswell’s life, was also known in his time for being incredibly clever, charismatic, rude, blowsy, grumpy, a misogynist in the constant company of women intellectuals, and all in all a mesmerising bother.

Please bear this in mind as, at one point, Gibson proudly reports that he never spoke the first words of a conversation out of “modesty” and would instead sit in total silence for as long as it took the other person to speak.

Susannah, have you imagined this scenario fully? Have you imagined it, with Johson himself in mind? Did the thought occur to you that the report of modesty was a LIE? That he was being an ASSHOLE? Because if I were a historian, whose focus was the personalities and characters of several well-documented people, I would perhaps interpret those documents rather than simply quoting them. I might wager that I had learned something about who these people were. I might at least subtly question whether the man who was intensely vain and would never shut up was baiting people. I might say he was a god damned troll. I might say this wasn’t “modesty” at all. Susannah–you cannot believe everything people say. It’s actually bad history to believe everything people say.

A similar refusal to interpret is a bit more offensive, veering into what I’d argue is real homophobia. In two notable cases, Gibson dives deeply into the lives of women whom she glosses with “somesaythismayhavebeenaromanticrelationshipbetweenthetwowomenbutthere’snoevidencefororagainst” and then proceeds to tell you the gayest shit you’ve ever heard in your life. “There’s no evidence,” she says anxiously, but yeah it’s true that Sarah Scott lived with a woman before her marriage and called herself and her roommate indistinguishable from husband of wife. It’s true that her roommate moved in with her and her husband when Sarah did get married. It’s true that Sarah did leave her husband and never see him again after ten months, and that she and her roommate then moved to the country where they started a women-only commune and adopted orphans, and after the roommate died young of a long illness, Sarah went on to live with various other groups of women, and also wrote a novel about a female intellectual utopia (Millenium Hall). Yes all of that is true but it would be pretty crazy to say that there is any evidence even remotely suggesting queerness in the historical record. That would be crazy! Some People Suggest.

On another occasion she gives this nervous disclaimer about two women who can’t stop thinking about each other send each other letters and flowers and hair and who introduce themselves to each other by one fake-dropping a handkerchief in church so that the other will pick it up and talk to her. Ma’am!!! MA’AM!!!!!! While there’s always a risk of being wrong about historical persons’ sexualities or gender identities, I think the absolute terror with which Gibson acknowledges the existing theories and then brushes them aside before reporting what is essentially the plot of a romance novel veers fully into homophobic territory. Yeah, you don’t KNOW know they’re gay. But you also have more evidence that they were gay than that they were straight, so what’s the problem, my girl? I daresay we are reading a perspective on queerness that WOULD be held by someone who thinks bleeding works.

I will also say that while she read a lot, Gibson maybe didn’t read quite as hard or far as she could. The example I’m most well versed in is Frances Burney, and Gibson’s read on her is a big fat failure. Burney essentially appears as a side character in this book. But if you’re talking about women bucking the norm, why do you have this bit about FB judging her friend for marrying an Italian, but NOT mention the fact that Burney not only eventually married a FRENCHMAN who was CATHOLIC (both extremely frowned upon traits in England at the time), but was the sole breadwinner for their family, through money she made by her publications? Why would you not make use of an incredibly famous example of exactly the point you’re trying to make? She was very well known as “Madame D’Arblay” all the way through the 19th century, because she took the name of her FRENCH CATHOLIC HUSBAND whom she SUPPORTED WITH BOOK MONEY, but that surely isn’t relevant to women bucking social conventions and making progress through writing, is it? It just feels so short-sighted and under-read.

I don’t have much else to say about this. The Bluestockings manage to shine in this book due to their own charms and flaws and fascinating lives, which in my opinion may be plenty of reason to pick up the book. It’s a way to get to know some deeply interesting people in a frequently ignored moment in literary history. It’s a great way to imagine something happening in the 1770s that didn’t happen to George Washington. But as far as writing history? Gibson herself is a passive participant, and her style of writing doesn’t do much except take notes on the papers I wish I were reading instead.

[Dee (in the Desert) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather dry look at the subject - some "learned ladies" back in the Age of Enlightenment and their salons & lives. Interesting history, but I struggled with it a lot

[Emma Deplores Goodreads Censorship · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

An enjoyable group biography of female intellectuals in the 18th century, a topic that happens to be a particular interest of mine. I would not put this book in the top tier for the subject—currently, that’s Romantic Outlaws, Liberty, and Jane Austen's Bookshelf—but then all of those cross over into the 19th century as much as the 18th and only the last has any overlap in the women profiled (Frances Burney, Hannah More, and Hester Thrale Piozzi appear in both), so I wound up learning a lot about historical figures previously unfamiliar to me.

Of particular interest were Sarah Scott, a writer who set up all-female communes with her female partner and friends and endeavored to support less fortunate women, and Catherine Macauley, a progressive historian and political figure who was more successful than most at ignoring societal expectations. Also new to me were the mini-biographies of Elizabeth Montagu, best known as the hostess of the “Bluestocking” salons, also a writer; Elizabeth Carter, a classicist who managed to remain always above reproach despite the unconventional choice of remaining unmarried and devoting herself to study; Hester Mulso Chapone, a poet and writer who defended women’s right to reject a proposed marriage; and Elizabeth Griffith, an Irish actress who wound up publishing her erudite letters with her husband-to-be. There’s a bit of Ann Yearsley, a poet and the single working-class woman represented, in the Hannah More section of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf (their patron/protegee relationship ended badly due to More’s classism), but a more substantial section here. There’s also a whole lot on Hester Thrale Piozzi, a diarist and memoirist who dominates several chapters with her strong voice and many misfortunes.

The book does not particularly make the case that these women were a “movement” or even a cohesive social group, as opposed to a bunch of people with similar interests who all knew each other to varying degrees, but after a somewhat rocky start (there’s a lot of generalities and repetition at the beginning) I found the individual biographies quite compelling. The women come to life on the page, their lives are interesting, and it’s especially nice to see how they intersected and supported one another (or sometimes didn’t), and the similarities and differences in their trajectories. Particularly notable is how committed they generally were to maintaining respectability in the face of the male establishment. There was a lot of anxiety and self-censoring, from Frances Burney’s fear of learning the “masculine” Latin to one of the saddest lines in the book, in which Hester Thrale Piozzi wrote that she never challenged her first husband out of fear that she would lose and be forced to face her own unimportance. She and Macauley are still the most “scandalous” women in the book, for entering into second marriages judged harshly by society (Piozzi’s second husband being an Italian music teacher, and Macauley’s a much younger man), both nonetheless scandalous enough to lead to rejection and estrangement from family and friends.

The book certainly has its flaws: aside from the early pages, the organization is confused, never quite certain whether it wants to be topical or just a series of mini-biographies. It is focused on narrative rather than analysis; I am sure the author, with a background in science history, knew very well that 18th century medicine was counterproductive and perhaps just found it superfluous to say so, but it’s true she does not. And one always has to wonder what else is wrong when one catches a mistake, such as describing a group of travelers as having “caught a glimpse of Marie-Antoinette, just nineteen and married only a year” (she married at 14). That said, overall I did enjoy this, and it’s a good introduction to a bunch of historical figures who have been largely forgotten.

[History Today]

The problem with 18th-century women, for the feminist public historian, is that they just won’t fit the narrative. We all know about the Suffragettes, so the thinking goes, and we are fairly sure that their forerunner Mary Wollstonecraft can be called a proto-feminist. Surely, a generation or two before Wollstonecraft, there were also brilliant women organising to topple the patriarchy?

Such a narrative underpins Susannah Gibson’s Bluestockings. The book argues exactly what its title suggests: that the group of female intellectuals loosely associated with the metropolitan salons of Elizabeth Montagu made up, collectively, ‘the first women’s liberation movement’. Across an interlinked series of biographical case studies, Gibson attempts to cast women writers ranging from Elizabeth Carter and Hannah More to Frances Burney and Hester Thrale Piozzi as proto-feminists who ‘laid the foundations for a whole new worldview’. While many full-length biographies of the key individuals are already available, an accessible group study such as this one is long overdue. Gibson is an engaging writer, with a good eye for entertaining detail. I am grateful, for example, to learn that Hannah More’s cats were named Passive Obedience and Non-Resistance.

But Gibson’s core aim – to present her subjects as a grouping both progressive and cohesive – is only credible if one takes a very selective approach. The problem with characterising the Bluestockings as a new beacon of feminist progressivism is apparent from the first few pages when, in order for her story to make sense, Gibson needs to show that the society upon which the Bluestockings exploded was entirely unenlightened on questions of women’s capabilities. ‘Women were held in low regard in the eighteenth century’, she informs us. Well, yes, by some people, such as the author of the 1739 pamphlet ‘MAN SUPERIOR TO WOMAN’, one of three sources cited as evidence of universal low regard. It is not mentioned, however, that the author was responding to an earlier pamphlet by ‘Sophia, a Person of Quality’ entitled ‘WOMAN NOT INFERIOR TO MAN’, and that his sally was quickly matched by another called ‘WOMAN’S SUPERIOR EXCELLENCE OVER MAN’. Such a curious omission prompts reflection on the many works published by both men and women before or around this time which celebrate female learning, virtue and skill. But to acknowledge such works would complicate the narrative: and so they go unacknowledged.

Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.

Sophie Coulombeau is Senior Lecturer in 18th-century English Literature at the University of York.

[Abigail Bok · Rating 4 out of 5]

The “bluestockings” were a group of eighteenth-century British women who managed against all odds to achieve an education in the subjects traditionally reserved to men. In the Age of Enlightenment, they valued reading, writing, reason, and conversation about ideas. Many of their ideas were revolutionary.

Susannah Gibson’s book tells the stories of a number of the more prominent bluestocking women (the name, ironically, derives from a male botanist who attended some of their gatherings; he did not take the time to change out of the rough clothes he wore in the field, including blue worsted stockings, before entering the elegant salon of his hostess, where he was celebrated for his intellect regardless of his garb). This book doesn’t have much depth of analysis and occasionally takes on a rather cringey rah-rah tone, but the lives of the women profiled are so riveting that I didn’t care. It would be impossible not to be moved and awed by all these women endured and overcame, their fierce spirits and courage to defy rigid norms. Their stories were invariably fascinating.

It is impossible to understand the works of early female novelists without knowing something about the intellectual milieu of their contemporaries and predecessors, and this book offers an efficient way to pick up that context.

[K. G. Whitehurst · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars for plenty of useful information, but a lousy means of organizing it as well as accounting for change (or not) over time. If there's a thesis, it's stated in the subtitle, and then it is not fulfilled. The Bluestockings were not a movement in any sense of that word; they were a coterie, a circle, of female literati and friends.

The constant pounding of standard White Academic Feminism--it's all the patriarchy's fault: men bad, marriage worse, children worst without any real discussion of where it comes from or how its inculcated (newsflash, it's Calvinist Protestantism which undergird this entire society)--not only takes away from what could've been an interesting study had there been more nuance, but also shows the author is a presentist. She judges the past by the standards of today. Yet, there are places where Gibson shows nuance and understanding, but has to come back to her feminist frame, which can be jolting and is frequently wearing. As an antidote, I recommend Amanda Vickery's BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, a social history of social expectations for both men and women in 18th century England.

I am curious why a historian of science, not a scholar of 18th century literature, would take up what is in effect an interconnected series of mini-biographies. Gibson seems especially interested in Hester Thrale, upon whom she expends the most time. Why not just write a biographical article on Thrale--whose first husband was a rogue and whose mother was both dependent and suffocating. It would make an interesting psychological study. Hester Thrale can sit with St. Augustine of Hippo when comes to bad mothers, and no question, her upbringing was a classic of bad parenting because of horribly mismatched parents. But she takes up entirely too much space in here and actually detracts from Elizabeth Montague, always considered the founder of the Bluestockings. Frances Burney gets short attention and Frances Boscawen none at all. Why? If anybody should've got more space, time, and attention it was Elizabeth Carter, the classicist, and Catherine Macauley, the historian. They both get some, but more would've been nice because they were working writers. And why did the Bluestockings not get on with the Scottish novelist Charlotte Lennox, author of THE FEMALE QUIXOTE?

The most telling problem here is that Gibson treats this coterie in isolation from the general intellectual ferment of the 18th century. This was the age of the novel--from Defoe at the beginning of the century to Maria Edgeworth at the end. Edgeworth's father was a member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, a society that represented the practical, technological side of the Enlightenments. (Yes, I highly recommend Roy Porter's ENLIGHTENMENTS, not so much Jenny Uglow's THE LUNAR SOCIETY; she got too enamored of her metaphors.) Samuel Johnson, who imposed so much on Hester Thrale, but who gave her straight advice about marriage, was a member of the Literary Club, along with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Edmund Burke. (See Leo Damorosch, THE CLUB). I think Gibson wanted to do the same things Uglow and Damrosch did, but she goes too far in declaring the Bluestocking an intellectual movement, and discussing the Bluestockings in isolation does them a disservice and ultimately, is dismissive.

[Marguerite Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this fascinating insight into the first group of 'bluestocking' women. I had come across Hester Thrale before, primarily with reference to her friendship with Dr Johnson, and of course Hannah More (who was commemorated in the winning dessert in the Great British Menu this year) but although I knew the names of some of the others in the group, I knew very little about them.

First of all though, it wasn't a fixed group. Some of the women covered here were outside the main coteries hosted by Thrale and Elizabeth Montague, due to their social positions, or the fact that they were considered of dubious morality. It's fascinating, the question of morality in fact, and one of the themes that keeps coming up. We're talking 18th, not 19th Century here, when women were considered of feebler mind - quite genuinely - and many of them agreed with that evaluation. Too much learning would not only get in the way of them finding a husband, but it would hinder their child-rearing capabilities, and make them either objects of ridicule or socially toxic. We're talking middle and upper class with one exception here - but even the 'dairy maid poet' Ann Yearsley was judged harshly when she stepped out of line and tried to take control of her earnings.

To be a 'blue stocking' in this period was to be an oddity unless you walked the fine line that Elizabeth Montagu was so careful to do. She had to be a woman first - so a wife, a mother. She had to be careful about the topics discussed in her salons, and about how she conducted herself outside. She was an incredibly clever, self-educated woman with a really impressive brain, yet much of her brain was given over to not letting people know how much brain she had! Talk about paradoxes. Hester Thrale too, had to toe the line (or is it tow, I'm never sure). She was a mother - oh my goodness, but that poor woman was a mother - who lost so many more children than lived, and who was pregnant almost every year of her first marriage. Yet she managed to write, to read, and to converse with some of the highest minds in the land - much of them, of course, male. Then, when love came along when she was widowed, and Hester followed her heart, was she judged! Not only by society but by her eldest daughter too. It seems Hester's very clever brain was fried by learning.

I'm not meaning to be flippant. This was a really excellent book, covering a really fascinating collection of women and assessing not only how they managed to live a 'blue stocking' life, but also how much they had to contend with in order to do that. Not many of them, astonishingly, concluded that women were equally born but unequally educated. Most of them danced around the inequalities because they had to continue to live in the world that created and maintained them. Those who did not were punished - by the other bluestockings as well as by society. This is a book that makes you mad, and it makes you punch the air at some of the achievements, and it makes you want to know more. By the end of Elizabeth Montagu's life, when Victorian values and the Romantics were coming in, the bluestockings were sidelined. Women were once again judged as frail, lesser beings. It took almost a hundred years before the calls for change became louder again.

Extremely readable, amazingly researched, this is my kind of history. Highly recommended. And I've already bought her next book too.

[Emily Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening, fascinating, inspiring if not mandatory read

[Court · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyed and made for some really great book club conversations! These women are badass, and we should have learned about them many moons ago. However, it did make me angry at the state of the world and how backwards women’s rights are going. Definitely worth reading! 3.5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Keely · Rating 5 out of 5]

Susannah Gibson's The Bluestockings explores the culture of literary salons in middle-to-late 18th-century England, and the circle of "clever women" scholars and writers who pushed gender norms by leading and participating in them. The primary figures Gibson profiles include Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, Hannah More, Ann Yearsley, Frances Burney, Elizabeth Carter, Catharine Macaulay, Sarah Scott, and Hester Mulso Chapone, among others. The work of these literary women paved the way for the next generation of women writers, from Jane Austen to Mary Wollstonecraft. Not surprisingly, this Bluestocking moment was followed by a wave of anti-feminist backlash that rolled in with the advent of Romantic movement in the early 19th century.

Loved this. It provided valuable context I wish I'd had as an undergraduate studying British literature, and it was an engaging read to boot. I felt like The Bluestockings helped me connect the literary dots, tracing a line from Burney, to Austen, to the Brontës, to Eliot, to Woolf, and beyond. A couple of things really struck me as I read the book: Despite their education and belief in women's intellectual equality with men, most of the Bluestockings still had major blind spots when it came to social class, and still fully accepted and promoted most aspects of the patriarchal society they lived in. Their horizons could only be stretched so far. It would be up to later writers like Mary Wollstonecraft to push them further. In addition, it blew me away to be reminded that these higher-class, privileged women were still subject the dangers and sorrows that motherhood represented in that age. It was pretty stark to read that Hester Thrale, in spite of thirteen live births, never had more than six children living at one time, and had only three survive to adulthood.

Side note: I'd like to compare the Bluestockings' birth dates to Strauss and Howe's generational paradigm to see what their generational archetypes would be. I'm guessing the older ones like Montagu would be part of a Prophet generation driving an Awakening? And maybe younger ones like Burney were part of a Nomad generation, which furthered a general collapsing of gender differences? I don't own Strauss and Howe's Generations book, so I'll need to check it out to find out for sure.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

"And historians will call them
Close friends, bеsties, roommates, colleagues
Anything but lovers
History hates lovers
Sidekicks, family, good pals, buddies
Anything but lovers"
--History Hates Lovers by Oublaire

This song was in my head this entire book. Sure, sure, these two women who never married, lived together, wrote each other odes and love poetry, claimed to be unable to think about anything or anyone else all day and dreamed about each other all night, and insisted upon being buried next to each other were just "excellent friends" because there is "no evidence" (lol okay Miss Marple) that they were anything more. I don't know what more evidence you need at this point.

Also, as another reviewer pointed out, Gibson claims multiple times that bloodletting "improved" various ailments for people in this book, to the point where I actually googled "can bloodletting actually work" at one point because, well, I'm not a historian and she is presenting this as fact?

I did learn a lot from this book and it was a fun read if you are okay to do some of the analysis work for yourself. The author quotes extensively from the primary sources of these authors' books and letters, so it was a condensed way to get a feel for all of them in one place. Good but could have been better.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Swimming against the cultural current, the Bluestockings were intellectual women in the 1750’s to 1790’s, a loose collection of educated, literary ladies … the salons formed around Elizabeth Montagu at Hill Street in London, and Hester Thrale in Streatham just outside the city were star-studded showcases for witty conversation and rational talk among both sexes … from Elizabeth Carter and Hester Mulso Chapone to Hannah More and Fanny Burney, these women demonstrated that men weren’t the only humans with brains … buried by the Romantics, but resurrected by the late Victorians, and later still by Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsburies, the Bluestockings were pioneers of feminism …
Virginia Woolf

[Madison McDowell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very inspiring and eye-opening book about a side of the Enlightenment that we don’t usually see. As an undergrad history student, I was never particularly interested in the Enlightenment; to me, it was just a bunch of white guys taking credit for science already established in the Middle East or India. We never talked about a single woman from that era. I bought the book purely for the fact that the cover was pretty and it was women’s history, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading it.

While I think Gibson lacks a fair bit of analysis in her writing, she portrays the lives of these women in a very engaging way. I felt a lot of strong emotions and an overwhelming sense of empathy while I read. Reading about Hester Thrale’s life was positively devastating.

The chronology was often hard to keep straight as the book jumped between women and how they interacted with each other. I didn’t mind it terribly, though. I preferred to explore the women’s complex relationships throughout their lives. Gibson does cover quite a few women, but not enough that a semi-regular reader of history wouldn’t be able to keep up with. And since the lives of all these women were so intertwined, they cycle through the narrative fairly frequently.

I appreciate that Gibson presents us with the good and the bad of these intellectual women. The good was inspiring, and the bad was a helpful reminder that these women still operated in a very patriarchal and class-based society, and many of them couldn’t quite escape it or let those ideas go. It makes me more grateful for the progress that came following the movement and for the rights I enjoy today.

I will certainly be doing further studies of these women and reading their works. I read this book in the middle of a very challenging senior year, and it gave me a great dose of motivation to continue on as a female historian (and plenty of ideas for future papers). Two of my goals in life are to make the Bluestockings proud and to make men angry.

My favorite quote: For these Bluestockings, friendships with other like-minded women were crucial to their success. These friendships operated outside the bounds of the patriarchy. Women’s relationships with men— be it a husband or a father— demanded a woman’s time, a woman’s duty, a woman’s obedience. Friendships with other women did not make these demands; rather, they gave inspiration, comfort, support and joy. pg. 221

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, it opened up a whole world to me that I hadn't known had existed of women intellectuals in 18th century England. Recommended on that basis alone.

That said, it was written thematically rather than chronologically, so it was a little hard to follow at times. The first time I read about a woman she might be in her forties, then in a later chapter with a different theme she was in her teens.

It wasn't hard to keep the women straight, though. The author chose six or seven (the only ones with enough documentation?) and stuck with them. We heard a LOT about Hester Thrale, quite possibly because she did write quite a lot about her life. I was glad to learn more about Lady Montagu and Fanny Burney. Reading extracts of people's letters is a wonderful way to know about what people really did think and feel in a time that in so many ways feels very remote.

This is a great gateway to this history. It seemed like the author explored most of the material available about these women, and there are many many endnotes. Even though I myself prefer a chronological telling it was well worth the read. I look forward to more feminist histories! (Jane Austen's Bookshelf is on my hold list...)

[Dinah Arnold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although it was a hard read at some point, this book has occupied my mind throughout the entire read. In particular, the conclusion connected the legacy of the Bluestockings and certain famous feminist writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, and the following generation of the Bluestockings - the romantics - together. Gibson managed to shed light on the stories of the most prominent figures of the Bluestockings in the context of the eighteenth-century patriarchal society. However, her writing style takes a while to get used to. Nevertheless, it is an important read, especially in today’s times.

[Samantha Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read on the Bluestockings. I’ll admit it took me a long time to read this. I feel like the organization of the book wasn’t super clear which added to my difficulties in getting into the read. I liked learning about the complexities of these women, their contributions and their relationships to each other. If you find this subject interesting it’s a good jumping off for you to do further research into the women yourself.

[Joann · Rating 5 out of 5]

A first-rate account of women in 18th century Britain who became successful writers and participants in intellectual circles despite the fact that doing so would undoubtedly “weaken an already very weak system”. Gibson’s research and writing are solid and the book moves right along. I was sad to come to the final page.

[Isobel Harvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone who has proudly worn a bluestocking badge on my bag for years, it was fascinating to learn about these pioneering women.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good starting point for learning about the actual Bluestockings, especially for someone like me who reads a lot of Historical Romances where the term is thrown around more times than not. I’m not saying it’s perfect, and I’m sure there are more flaws than I noticed, but overall I enjoyed my time.

After finishing, I struggle to call this group of Bluestockings “the first women's’ liberation movement” which Gibson argues they were - as she does not provide the evidence, make the ties to modern feminism, nor analyze any action of the women to prove her thesis.

[Ashley Wittreich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gibson does an excellent job weaving the stories of these remarkable women in a way you forget this is a scholarly text. Poignant read for the moment; women through the centuries have fought for large and small victories to attain equality, to have independence, and choose their own life. The work is never done.

[Laura Foster · Rating 4 out of 5]

The nature of this book is focused on a specific subset of affluent women, who often held and upheld conservative and damaging views of the time. I wish those had been explored more to hold this period of history accountable, and even to show how women were influencing the political sphere.

With that in mind, I still appreciated the opportunity to hear the lives of women in the mid 18th century, when their stories are so woefully under represented. The look into motherhood, friendship and love, and how these managed to be subverted was a great read.

Though Susannah, some of these women were definitely dating and there's nothing wrong with saying the evidence points to that!

[Sophia Eck]

Purporting to be a book chronicling the history of the “bluestockings”, ostensibly the first, but in my opinion perhaps somewhat wrongly proclaimed, “feminist group”, The Bluestockings by Susannah Gibson ultimately oddly eludes its own claimed premise. Starting the book, we all too briefly touch on the life of the supposed founder of the group, Elizabeth Montagu, and are told a little bit about a few other key characters in this circle, but following this portion, which is merely 1/4 of the books entirety, Gibson strangely focuses, in intense depth (almost uncanny depth) on three or so women’s lives who seemed merely tangential to the group, and seemed to be almost ostracized for making subversive choices, which seems antithetical to any of the “bluestockings” claims of being progressive. I ultimately think Gibson unfortunately failed to find enough records and historical proof of the “bluestockings” to support or warrant an entire book, and consequently padded the latter half with, while interesting, fundamentally unrelated but more deeply recorded women who were actually seemingly viewed upon with scorn by the leading women of the “bluestocking” group, for, in hindsight, truly trivial reasons. While the book was interesting throughout, it was definitively not what it set out to be or was portrayed to be, and also went into so much depth at times in terms of some of these women’s lives so far as to feel unrealistic and deeply speculative. Despite its intrigue, I think this topic deserved less pontification than Gibson gave it, or at least a perspective shift to a more intent focus on the actual namesake of the book. Thank you to W. W. Norton & Company for a copy of this in return for my honest review!

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most eye opening books I've 'read' in a while (I listened to this one narrated by the delightfully alliterative Fenella Fudge). I've never been a huge fan of Romantic or Victorian literature, with plots driven by characters navigating seemingly ridiculous social strictures. But Gibson sets the stark scene that confronted women in 18th century Great Britain and Ireland (albeit upper and middle class women). No education. No property rights. Minimal ability to work outside the home (this was different for working class women). Minimal control over their bodies, with devastating consequences. Immediate and total ostracism for violating societal norms.

In this hidebound world, a group of brilliant women began to assert their intellects and independence. Most were raised by parents who allowed them to gain some education. But they needed to express that intellect without being seen as "learned ladies", an extremely pejorative designation at the time. A number of them hosted salons attended by both women and men that focused on the arts, literature, politics, history, philosophy, and science.

These women wrote plays, novels, literary criticism, and great works on history, sometimes anonymously to avoid that awful learned label. They mixed it up and held their own with the greatest men of their time. They helped their husbands run the businesses that kept the roofs over their heads. One established a utopian all-women commune that provided education and support for women in distress, people with disabilities, and orphans. A few never married and others were quickly widowed and never remarried, but some married and had many pregnancies (while navigating venereal infections brought home by their philandering husbands) and endured unimaginable losses as child after child succumbed to an almost blackly comical menagerie of aliments (teething, stomach aches, all manner of fevers).

The rules these women set for themselves were severe. Given the social tightrope they were walking on intellectual matters, they wouldn't tolerate anyone who broke other societal rules, especially those around sexual norms. When the renowned historian and 47-year-old widow, Catherine Macaulay, married a 21-year-old ship's mate, a ton of opprobrium came crashing down on her, which she more or less shrugged off. The widow Hester Thrale Piozzi got the same treatment for marrying her daughter's Italian, Catholic, lower class voice instructor. She struggled more, but lived to a ripe old age in seeming happiness.

In the end, the Bluestocking were taken down by fearful reactionary forces (aren't they always?) trying to reinforce old norms following the French Revolution, and their own conservatism and prudishness as the Romantic Period flowered in the early 19th century. Still, while I'm doubtful they represent the First Women's Movement (though maybe that's true for Great Britain), I found Gibson's excavation of their lives and accomplishments fascinating and moving.

[Cormac O'Neill]

I loved this book! I bought it after reading a lukewarm review in History Today that (correctly) identified the title as misleading - not only were the Bluestockings not a womens movement but Gibson doesn't really make the case that they were were. Furthermore I have seen other negative reviews criticise this as a work of history - I think that's fair, as it's much more a collection of biographies, with added reports on (but not exactly criticism of) the writings of these women. But I think as long as you see the subtitle as nothing more than a publishing gimmick (which to be fair Gibson probably didn't even choose) and accept you're not reading the history of a movement you can enjoy the book for what it is - a fascinating look at the lives of (mostly middle to upper class) 18th century British women writers and wits, that manages to illuminate the contributions some of them made to the fight for womens' educations without anachronistically protraying them as feminist heroes. And it's an enjoyable read!

The nuances and complexity of their views on subjects like womens' education, marriage, family, politics, literature and the equality or inequality of the sexes is well explored, as well as the diversity of views among them. Many didn't believe in full equality for women (although others certainly did) but all believed in the ability of women to be as intelligent, critical and literary as men.

The bits I enjoyed most were probably those about figures like Sarah Scott and Hester Thrale. Sarah Scott was in some ways the most practivally radical among them as she actually set up a commune of sorts for women who had been marginalised by society in one eway or another - inneligibility for marriage, premarital pregnancy, dissability or learning dissability - and wrote a novel about such an institution. Gibson avoids painting her as an uncomplicatedly virtuous or particularly ideologically radical figure though and highlights the ways class and Christian morality about 'fallen women' still imbued her world view.

Hester Thrale similarly was no modern feminist but reading about her life in which she raised dozens of children and sadly lost most of them, bailed her rather feckless and unfaithful husband out of terrible business decisions and basically helped run his brewery, effectively cared for Samuel Johnson who simply decided to move into her house* and still found time to write her 'Thraliana' fills you with a level of sympathy and admiration that makes you happy she got her hapily ever after.

While most weren't radical, the end of the book satisfyingly places the Bluestockings in the history of women intellectuals and thinkers and chartsg their influence on later developments in a genuinely feminist direction. And it's all very readable and well written.

*As well as the fascinating women in this book, I learned a lot more about some interesting men - I knew very little about Johnson and he features a lot, and frankly comes accross as an unselfaware crank

[Vintagebooklvr · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellently researched and written portrait of a group of women who defied the societal norms to establish groups where men and women could engage as intellectual equals in discussions on a variety of subjects and some even made their livings by writing histories, novels, poetry and in other areas. Gibson explores not just the women at the center of the group but some at the periphery and their relationship to each other as well as a variety of aspects of life such as marriage, love, motherhood, and friendship.

These women had to walk a fine line between respectability and pushing the boundaries because smart women were considered unnatural. It was supposed that a clever woman would not make a good wife or mother and that was the purpose of women. They challenged the patriarchal views but were not free from many of the restraints. They struggled to justify time for themselves and their own interests that took time away from their children. They supported each other but at time clashed, competed and even ostracized members. Class and morality still shaped their outlooks. And they were very well aware that they walked a tightrope between being able to establish a small toe-hold to challenge the status quo and the ever present majority (which included men and women) who thought they were unnatural and looking to knock them down.

It was heartbreaking to read about the many pregnancies that ended in miscarriage the childhood deaths of much loved children. Hester Thrale's story was particularly poignant considering her many children that did not make it to adulthood. Her nightmares of the death of her children during her pregnancy, and even her own death in childbirth, are heart-wrenching much less the many sorrows she experienced. And then, finally after widowhood when she had a chance to find real love with a man-- who was younger, Italian, Catholic and not of her class--meant being outcast by her fellow Bluestockings and a falling out with her remaining children. But she did finally find happiness. But not all who bucked the system did.

And in the end, there was a major backlash against the group. Instead of being held up to be fascinating and taken serious by some, they were made to be a thing of ridicule. But their contributions, while often forgotten and erased, did have their impact on such people as Mary Wollstonecraft and others that continued the work of establishing women's rights. Here their rightful place in the history of the women's movement is once more claimed.

[Cheyanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I learned from this book that the term “bluestocking” was first applied to male intellectuals in 18th century England who were indifferent to fashion, it quickly became associated with the “learned ladies” who boldly challenged the men’s dominance in the salons and libraries of the day. The author admits that compared to the later feminist and women’s suffrage movements, the female bluestockings’ campaign for equality began as a whisper and peaked as a gentle murmur. Yet, she makes a persuasive case for the importance of the door they opened, if only a crack, to a larger world for women.

The leading members of the group moved in an elite world of wealth and family connections. They asserted their right to education and to use their minds, to write books and to converse boldly with the leading men of the day. But they were hesitant to attack the patriarchy that supported them and tended to be patronizing, at best, toward women of a lower social class or members of the their own class who married “beneath themselves” for love. (Personally, I found the chapters about such déclassé women to be some of the most interesting in the book.)

However, even the most privileged women were subject to being traded like land or cattle on the marriage market and they knew it. As the author points out, the property exchanges involved in upper class marriages meant that wealthy women generally had less choice of mate than did women in the lower social orders. Marriage announcements always gave the name of the groom, and often the amount of the dowry, but the bride was usually identified only as her father’s daughter. The right to reject a prospective husband was therefore the one subject on which the bluestockings dared to (politely) voice dissent.

Marriage, even if happy, meant frequent pregnancies, painful childbirths, and miscarriages. Child mortality was also tragically high. It was an era in which wealthy women often breastfed their infants and cared directly for their ill and dying family members. They were expected to supervise large households and often had to assist discretely with their husbands’ businesses and careers. They also had to endure the hypocrisy of the men who partook of their hospitality but did not hesitate to criticize them in shockingly misogynistic terms. (I’m looking at you Mr. Johnson and Mr. Boswell.)

Thus, even inside the gilded cage, it took determination, courage, and considerable stamina for a woman to carve out an intellectual life for herself. The bluestockings who did so are worth knowing and Susannah Gibson tells their story well.

[Yenta Knows · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. I did not find a clearly stated definition of “blue stocking” or “the blue stocking period.” But “blue stocking” appears to be a somewhat pejorative term for women who were intellectually curious. The canonical example was Lady Elizabeth Montagu, whose salon thrived during the latter half of the 18th century, from 1746 to 1781.

I suppose you could say that Montagu and her cohort did advance the cause of equality. But geez! “Equality” meant marrying a guy who was rich and busy. Rich enough so you could have a salon and busy enough that he left you alone to have it.

And this “equality” meant, essentially, being a hostess: organizing gatherings with good food and good conversation. Maybe, like Lady Elizabeth Montagu, you led the conversations and set the level of discourse. Maybe you were famed for your witty conversation. But did this bring women widespread education and full participation in society? It did not.

At best, you can say that the blue stockings pushed open the door a crack. Any progress is good, but I doubt that the brief blue stocking period deserves to be described as “the first women’s movement.”

Having attacked the book for overselling the value of Lady Elizabeth Montagu, I will praise it for the insight offered into the hellish life of Hester Thrale, who endured four miscarriages, one stillbirth, and 15 births in 16 years. I am not sure how many of the children lived to adulthood: several died very young, one at 8 days. How did Hester endure? Bad enough, BTW, that the children died, even worse that they had to endure 18th century medicine — purges, leeches, bleeding. The cures were indeed worse than the diseases.

I have heard the cold facts of pre-twentieth century infant mortality. Hearing the facts play out in one person’s life illuminates the tragedy.

Perhaps worse, IMHO, is that it appears her husband had a venereal disease, probably caught from his extracurricular fucking. Did he give his wife a break? Hah! It might be the “Age of Reason” but sexual ethics remained back in the 16th century. Hester’s job was to produce a male heir or die trying. Literally.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book delves into the challenges that women have faced throughout most of modern history. Dealing with patriarchy, when they were without any legal rights, except in a secondary role through marriage. Where women were discouraged from becoming educated and learning about science and business, but encourage to focus on the music, homemaking, and childcare. Husbands did not spend much time at home with their wives and family, but were off at work or to clubs, mistresses, and parties. It was sad reading about so many children dying at young ages and the suffering of the women during so many pregnancies. Sadly, women would spend so much time being pregnant with little time to recover between pregnancies.

However, the author shows how English women in the late 1700s were creative in working around those barriers to have an impact on society and politics. It is interesting the pressure placed upon them from other women, especially mothers and mothers-in-laws (older women), to pursue the traditional women’s roles and interests. Young women were advised that to be too interested in education and learning would not lead to marriage. The couples in this book do not seem to be interested or in love with one another, but merely seeking a spouse that was fitting for, or improving their station in life. Implying that engaging intellectually with one’s spouse was not an appealing trait that would draw them closer together.

The author also points out that there were many men’s clubs but none for women nor any that allowed both men and women to belong and intermingle. These women created salons where they eventually invited both men and women to attend and exchange ideas and opinions on all subjects. Creating communities where people felt comfortable discussing current issues without retribution.

I love the way the author distinguishes relationships. These friendships operated outside the bounds of patriarchy. Women’s relationships with men – be it a father or husband – demanded a woman’s time, a woman’s duty, a woman’s obedience. Friendship with other women did not make demands; rather they gave inspiration, comfort, support, and joy.

It was sad to see their efforts to establish a foothold in promoting women’s causes to only have the momentum fade away by the 1800s, when society embraced romanticism.

[W.S. Luk · Rating 3 out of 5]

This readable and novelistic book charts the influence of the literary coterie known as the Bluestockings, touching on topics ranging from radical political reform to Samuel Johnson's swollen testicles, with their scale (the topics, not the testicles) highlighting how their writings challenged social orthodoxies and meshed with the great debates of their times. Gibson's book is most compelling where she closely examines the rhetorical strategies these women used, particularly her detailed reading of the letters debating marital norms that Hester Mulso exchanged with Samuel Richardson. She also engages effectively with how the Bluestockings' work was bound up with their class positions and prejudices, most notably with her study of Ann Yearsley's tumultuous relationship with her poetic patroness, though in this respect I would've been interested to learn how their work was received by or affected people outside their upper-class circles (insofar that any such records exist). In contrast, when she speaks more generally about these figures' relationships or gives accounts of their work in broad-brush terms (she discusses the success of Fanny Burney's Evelina, but doesn't seem to give any summary of its content or explicate why it was so appealing to readers), I felt the book and her thesis became unfocused, describing the significance of their work rather than demonstrating it.

[Rahrahreading · Rating 3 out of 5]

First book of the year, and it's not bad. However, I am getting quite burned out on popular history books that lack the bite of a good paper. Gibson's writing slides sometimes into the territory of making me want to go on JSTOR, but it's otherwise entertaining.

I read a lot about the work of the Bluestockings when I was a teenager in search of literary, classics loving 'grandmothers' to pinch Emily Dickinson's turn of phrase that Gibson quotes. Then, I assumed that they were as they are shown to be in Richard Samuel's School of Athens style painting of them as muses in the temple of Apollo. Composed, sagacious, high-minded. Well of course that was a naïf's fancy.

Gibson shows them to be human and complex. These women dared to be publically scholarly at a time when women weren't really supposed to do that, but they bought the freedom to do this by putting on a show of feminine respectability. And as it often does to the communities it is supposed to aid, respectability politics tore the Bluestockings apart. Class issues also caused tensions within the group and meant that they were not as inclusive as they could have been. Hannah More's treatment of Ann Yearsley was ghastly.

Imperfections aside, without this movement, the history of women's writing and writing in general would have been completely different. So let us all don our bluestockings and set our alarms to remind us to rise early and practice our Greek.