The Bluestockings A History Of The First Women S Movement
Download The Bluestockings A History Of The First Women S Movement PDF/ePub or read online books in Mobi eBooks. Click Download or Read Online button to get The Bluestockings A History Of The First Women S Movement book now. This website allows unlimited access to, at the time of writing, more than 1.5 million titles, including hundreds of thousands of titles in various foreign languages.
The Bluestockings
Author: Susannah Gibson
language: en
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Release Date: 2024-07-23
One of The New Yorker’s Best Books of the Year “Intimate social history.” —New York Times Book Review 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.
Bluestockings
A NEW YORKER AND NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Sophisticated, rich and skilful . . . highlights the extraordinary place these women carved out for themselves against the odds' New Statesman 'Remarkable . . . The Bluestockings bust out of the pages with unmistakable glee . . . their complexity and individuality shine through' BBC History 'Spirited, lively and scholarly' Literary Review 'A story of sisterhood and empowerment' PHILIPPA GREGORY In Britain in the 1750s, women had no power and no rights - all money and property belonged to their fathers or husbands. A brave group risked everything to think and live as they wished, despite the sneers of contemporaries who argued that books frazzled female brains and damaged their wombs. Meet the Bluestockings: ELIZABETH MONTAGU hosted a series of glittering salons in her London drawing room, where a circle of women and men discussed theatre, philosophy and the classics, competing to outdo each other in wit and brilliance. Discover how she took on Voltaire and won. Whilst nursing twelve children and helping run her bullying husband's brewery, HESTER THRALE took key writers under her wing - Dr Johnson moved into her house for several years. Her vivid diaries offer a powerful chronicle of what happened when she finally decided to follow her heart. Find out how poetess and former milkmaid ANN YEARSLEY fought back when her snobbish patron refused to hand over her earnings because she was working class and thus irresponsible . . . Or how CATHERINE MACAULEY's eight volume history of England caused such a sensation that she became a leading light in the American Revolution - while her unorthodox love-life scandalised her contemporaries . . . In this brilliant book, Susannah Gibson explores the lives and legacies of these and other figures who went on to inspire writers and thinkers from Mary Wollstonecraft to Virginia Woolf and lead the way for feminism. Bluestockings: the unexpected and inspiring stories of the forgotten heroines of Britain's very first women's movement.
The Palgrave Dictionary of Transnational History
Written and edited by many of the world's foremost scholars of transnational history, this Dictionary challenges readers to look at the contemporary world in a new light. Contains over 400 entries on transnational subjects such as food, migration and religion, as well as traditional topics such as nationalism and war.