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

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