Elizabeth Montagu

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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
Wealth and Poverty Ann Yearsley
The newly-rescued Yearsleys came to the attention of Hannah More in her capacity not as writer but as philanthropist. She found AY to be respectable, was impressed by her poetry, and decided that the best...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Wright
FW 's mother, Camilla Campbell Wright , belonged to the British aristocracy. The bluestocking Elizabeth Robinson Montagu was her godmother and great-aunt.
Eckhardt, Celia Morris. Fanny Wright. Harvard University Press.
5
Dedications Helen Maria Williams
HMW published with her name her six-canto poem Peru, on the topic of colonialism, specificallyEuropean-New World and Christian-pagan relationships, dedicated to Elizabeth Montagu .
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
57 (1784): 376
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
There she began to frequent Elizabeth Montagu 's bluestocking circle. She was introduced in cultural circles by Andrew Kippis , minister of the church her family attended, and soon knew William Hayley , Sarah Siddons
Wealth and Poverty Anna Williams
There were fifty stipends on offer and more than five hundred people applied. Moreover, the terms of the charity turned out to exclude Welsh people. All her life Williams found personal friends more helpful than...
Publishing Anna Williams
Williams had suffered from the usual anxieties of those who began collecting subscriptions long before their book was ready: the money had been eaten up by necessities, and she was afraid of inadvertently swindling her...
Publishing Helen Maria Williams
HMW presented the manuscript of her Ode on the Peace to Elizabeth Montagu ; it was published the same year, without her name but with mention of her previous publication.
Textual Production Rebecca West
In 1933 RW wrote an essay about Emmeline Pankhurst for The Post-Victorians. She also wrote essays about Charlotte Brontë , for The Great Victorians (1932), and Elizabeth Montagu , for From Anne to Victoria (1937).
West, Rebecca. “Bibliography”. Rebecca West: A Celebration, edited by Samuel Hynes, Viking Press, pp. 761-6.
763-4
Textual Features Mercy Otis Warren
MOW designed her volume of poetry to have a sort of dedication in the form of a poem addressed to Elizabeth Montagu , dated 10 July. This calls on Montagu for solidarity: A sister's hand...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Melesina Trench
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT 's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Parker and Bourn.
18
Later pages mix letters...
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...
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
Family and Intimate relationships Laurence Sterne
He married, in 1741, Elizabeth Lumley , who was a cousin of Elizabeth Montagu .
Battestin, Martin C., editor. Dictionary of Literary Biography 39. Vol. 2 vols., Gale Research.
473
Textual Production Charlotte Smith
It was small but handsome. Thomas Stothard did two of the illustrations. His design for sonnet 12 (Written on the Sea Shore.—October 1784—the month in which she crossed the Channel with her children...

Timeline

5 December 1738: The trial opened in which Theophilus Cibber...

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5 December 1738

The trial opened in which Theophilus Cibber sued William Sloper for adultery, claiming £5,000 damages: virtually the trial of Susannah Cibber . The jury found Sloper guilty but signified their opinion of Theophilus by awarding...

1 May 1749: Elizabeth Chudleigh created a sensation by...

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1 May 1749

Elizabeth Chudleigh created a sensation by appearing at a masquerade in the character of Iphigenia, in a dress so transparent that she was as good as naked.

22 March 1754: A group of Nobles, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants...

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22 March 1754

A group of Nobles, Clergy, Gentlemen, & Merchants met to establish what became the Royal Society of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

10 August 1758: The Magdalen Hospital (for fallen women)...

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10 August 1758

The Magdalen Hospital (for fallen women) opened in Prescot Street, London, after a considerable campaign to influence public opinion.

31 May 1766: Coalmine-owner and bluestocking Elizabeth...

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31 May 1766

Coalmine-owner and bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu , who had already commented acidly on the narrowness of Newcastle streets, wrote of its people as little better than Savages.

July 1773: The Westminster Magazine printed, along with...

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July 1773

The Westminster Magazine printed, along with its account of Oxford University 's annual degree-giving, an article by L. P.On the Propriety of Bestowing Academical Honours on the Ladies.

April 1774: The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah...

Women writers item

April 1774

The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.

By April 1774: A Father's Legacy to His Daughters, by Dr...

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By April 1774

A Father's Legacy to His Daughters, by Dr John Gregory , was posthumously published.

28 November 1776: The otherwise unidentified Mrs H. Cartwright...

Women writers item

28 November 1776

The otherwise unidentified Mrs H. Cartwright wrote the dedication to Elizabeth Montagu of her first work, Letters on Female Education Addressed to a Married Lady, which appeared early the next year.

1777: Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses...

Women writers item

1777

Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...

1785: Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration...

Women writers item

1785

Dialogues Concerning the Ladies, a celebration of famous women, was anonymously published; it borrows from Ballard 's Memoirs of Eminent Ladies.

By early October 1930: London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite...

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By early October 1930

London publisher Gerald Howe issued a composite biography entitled Six Women of the World, which had previously made up six volumes in a Representative Women series, 1927-9.

Texts

Montagu, Elizabeth, and George, first Baron Lyttelton. “Dialogues XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII”. Dialogues of the Dead, Garland, 1970, pp. 291-20.
Climenson, Emily J., and Elizabeth Montagu. Elizabeth Montagu, The Queen of the Bluestockings. Her Correspondence from 1720 to 1761. John Murray, 1906.
Montagu, Elizabeth. Essay on Shakespear. J. Dodsley, 1769.
Blunt, Reginald, and Elizabeth Montagu. Mrs Montagu, "Queen of the Blues", Her Letters and Friendships from 1762 to 1800. Constable, 1923.
Montagu, Elizabeth. “MSS MO 1-6923”. Huntington Library Manuscripts.
Montagu, Elizabeth. The Letters of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu. Editor Montagu, Matthew, T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1813.