Hester Mulso Chapone

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As a young woman Hester Mulso (later HMC ) was a forceful arguer against social injustice meted out to women, but her enduring reputation as a writer and Bluestocking is as a staid, conservative moralist and dispenser of advice. She wrote letters, essays, poems, and conduct literature.
Stipple engraving of Hester Mulso Chapone y R. Page, published late 1812. She wears a hat with a flat top and large brim over a white cap, a dark bodice with white linen under it, and apparently a coat which is either sleeveless or darker in the body than sleeves. Her name is below: "Mrs Chapone".

Milestones

27 October 1727

Hester Mulso was born in an Elizabethan house near the church at Twywell in Northamptonshire, the only daughter and the youngest child in her family.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
76-7

By May 1773

HMC published her anonymous Letters on the Improvement of the Mind, addressed to a Young Lady—her eldest niece—and dedicated to Elizabeth Montagu .
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
43 (1773): 241
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
231

Christmas Day 1801

HMC died at Hadley Wood in Middlesex.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
229

Biography

Birth and Family

27 October 1727

Hester Mulso was born in an Elizabethan house near the church at Twywell in Northamptonshire, the only daughter and the youngest child in her family.
Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England. Clarendon.
76-7

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