Elizabeth Montagu

-
Standard Name: Montagu, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Robinson
Nickname: Fidget
Nickname: The Two Peas (with Sarah Scott)
Nickname: The Queen of the Blues
Married Name: Elizabeth Montagu
EM , eighteenth-century Bluestocking leader, is known on the one hand as an informal letter-writer, and on the other hand for ambitious critical intervention in canonicity and cultural debates, with her critical study of Shakespeare and dialogues of the dead.
Mezzotint of Elizabeth Montagu, published by John Raphael Smith in 1776 after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds. She is seen in profile, sitting in a large upholstered chair against a backdrop of drapery, a pillar, and an outdoor landscape. Her dress and petticoat are voluminous and heavily decorated, with ruffled sleeves and a bow at the neck. Her hair is brushed back under a small bonnet perched on top of her head and tied with a dark ribbon. Below the image is a coat of arms and italic writing: "Mrs. Mon

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore
Still in her early teens, Mary Eleanor Bowes was taken up by the Bluestockings. Elizabeth Montagu , she later reported, was pleased to honour me with her friendship, approbation, and correspondence.
Parker, Derek. The Trampled Wife. Sutton.
14
Once she...
Friends, Associates Ann Radcliffe
While staying with her uncle Thomas Bentley at Chelsea, Ann Ward (later AR ) met a number of influential men, most of them with Dissenting connections: Joseph Banks , George Fordyce , Ralph Griffiths ,...
Friends, Associates Catherine Talbot
Six months later CT was staying with the duchess on an extended visit. She was also a good friend of Elizabeth Montagu (of whose closeness to Carter she was sometimes jealous); of Montagu's friends George Lyttelton
Friends, Associates Mary Deverell
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography notes both that MD received patronage from Bristol heiress Ann Lovell Gwatkin , and that Hannah More emphatically did not take to her, though their paths must repeatedly have...
Friends, Associates Frances Reynolds
FR became close to Elizabeth Montagu during the lifetime of Samuel Johnson, and after his death Montagu would have been her most committed, as well as her wealthiest, protector. Montagu sat to FR and collected...
Intertextuality and Influence Hester Mulso Chapone
The book was a resounding success in the market. She had had the idea for these advice letters in 1765, when the niece who was to receive them was only eight. Montagu encouraged her to...
Intertextuality and Influence Ann Thicknesse
AT makes it clear she is no proto-feminist: If women are thought to possess minds less capable of solid reflection than men, they owe this conjecture entirely to their own vanity, and erroneous method of...
Leisure and Society Joanna Baillie
In the earlier 1840s, however, she was still a keen reader. She tackled the first edition of Frances Burney 's Diary and Letters out of a desire to get some insight into the literary society...
Leisure and Society Elizabeth Carter
EC had her portrait painted by the artist Catherine Read (at least the third painter to represent her). It was commissioned by Elizabeth Montagu .
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
246
Literary responses Samuel Johnson
Like all of Johnson's later works this was controversial. For Johnson the art of biography has nothing to do with eulogy, and (quite apart from personal objections, like Elizabeth Montagu 's indignation at his low...
Literary responses Hannah More
Elizabeth Montagu wrote to Elizabeth Carter on 19 September 1793 ostensibly speculating as to what exactly was meant by the title Bas Bleu. She seemed to think (probably feigning, since the term bluestocking was...
Literary responses Hannah More
HM was much praised for this pamphlet as soon as her authorship was known. Porteus wrote to her as if to Mrs Chip, the author's wife, with the conceit that the pamphlet would make Chip...
Literary responses Sarah Wentworth Morton
During her lifetime SWM was seen as standing at the head of a national tradition of women's writing: in 1791 she was flattered with the honorific titles of both the Sappho and the Elizabeth Montagu
Literary responses Ann Yearsley
More and Elizabeth Montagu admired AY as a primitive, untrained writer whose excellence came from nature, not from carefully nurtured ability: as a phenomenon verging on a freak. More's Prefatory Letter to Yearsley's Poems, on...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Frances Burney thought this the best of all Barbauld's poems. Hannah More wrote to thank ALB for writing so well on a subject so near her, More's heart,
Paul, Lissa. The Children’s Book Business. Routledge.
111
and recommended the poem to Elizabeth Montagu

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.