The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century that emphasised education and mutual cooperation. It was founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others as a literary discussion group, a step away from traditional, non-intellectual women's activities. Both men and women were invited to attend, including the botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet, who, due to his financial standing, did not dress for the occasion as formally as was customary and deemed "proper", in consequence appearing in everyday blue worsted stockings.
The society gave rise to the term "bluestocking", which referred to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation rather than on fashion,[1] and, by the 1770s, came to describe learned women in general.[2]
- ^ Schnorrenberg, Barbara Brandon. "Montagu, Elizabeth (1718–1800)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/19014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
- ^ "The Bluestockings Circle". National Portrait Gallery, London. Retrieved 4 June 2023.
While the term 'bluestocking' was first associated with the intimate social groupings that met at the salons of Montagu, Vesey and Boscawen, by the 1770s the name came to apply to learned women more generally. This larger eighteenth-century resonance, which is investigated in the next section of the exhibition, stands testament to the high profile that bluestockings achieved in an age when women had few rights and little chance of independence.