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
Friends, Associates Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB met Elizabeth Montagu for the first time (after some months' correspondence) when on her honeymoon trip she visited Montagu's house in Hill Street, Mayfair, London site of the famous bluestocking salon.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
147
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, p. xxi - xlvi.
xliv
Rodgers, Betsy. Georgian Chronicle: Mrs Barbauld and her Family. Methuen.
80
Friends, Associates Bathsua Makin
BM 's brother-in-law John Pell called her a woman of great acquaintance.
Teague, Frances. Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Bucknell University Press.
82
She was a lifelong friend of diarist and antiquarian Sir Simonds D'Ewes , who had been at her father's school, and of...
Friends, Associates Ann Fisher
As an eighteenth-century publisher AF was in a small way one of the new breed of literary patrons. She and her husband helped the minor pastoral poet John Cunningham (1729–1773) by publishing him both in...
Friends, Associates Mary Collyer
MC knew Elizabeth Carter slightly before her marriage, and was a friend of Samuel Richardson . Carter wrote of her to Elizabeth Montagu and as an author she also met other Bluestockings, becoming particularly...
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...
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...
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...
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
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...
Literary responses Frances Burney
Hester Thrale recorded a significant dissenting voice: nine months after publication, Mrs Montagu cannot bear Evelina.
Clifford, James L. Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs Thrale). Clarendon Press.
172
The stumbling-block was probably the low elements of the book.
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...

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