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
Literary responses Sarah Chapone
SC 's friend and printer Richardson saw her project in a different and far more simple light than she did: as the administering by a good woman of an antidote to the Poison shed by...
Literary responses Eliza Fletcher
During her lifetime EF acquired a literary reputation for her life rather than her works. Elizabeth Isabella Spence wrote of her as the Mrs. Montague of Edinburgh, who combined intellect with virtue and made...
Literary responses Phebe Gibbes
This novel aroused much interest. One letter was reprinted almost entire, without attribution, on 2 July 1789 in the Aberdeen Magazine as a Picture of the Mode of living at Calcutta. In a letter from...
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 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, 1987.
172
The stumbling-block was probably the low elements of the book.
Occupation Frances Reynolds
Samuel Johnson was eager to sit for her, and did so on three occasions: in March 1775, in June 1780, and in summer 1783. He may have been sitting for her on the day before...
Occupation Hannah More
HM embarked on helping Ann Yearsley in the terrible winter of 1783-4, when the Yearsley family were near destitution. Charity modulated into literary patronage over the year 1784, as More brought Yearsley to the attention...
Occupation Anna Letitia Barbauld
At some time before November 1773, while the engaged pair were casting around for a means of earning money, Countess Spencer (perhaps, but only perhaps, with the support of Elizabeth Montagu , and quite possibly...
Occupation Hester Mulso Chapone
Suggestions were put to her about taking up a job as companion to an English duchess or governess in a German princely household, but the always-influential Elizabeth Montagu disliked the sound of the first position...
Occupation Sarah Murray
SM later ran another school in Kensington. Elizabeth Hagglund , author of the entry on Sarah Murray in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, takes the identity between Murray and the author Mease...
Occupation Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
LMWM acted as patron to a number of writers (all male so far as is known), most notably Richard Savage and Henry Fielding , but also Edward Young and Samuel Boyse . Books to which...
politics Sarah Scott
The Bath Road also runs close to Elizabeth Montagu's country house at Sandleford. SS modelled this community on the one she had imagined in Millenium Hall, which in turn is closely related to the...
Publishing Mary Deverell
MD had apparently finished this poem in draft by 1782.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
It was dedicated to Lord Aldborough . Subscribers included George Crabbe , Richard Graves , Jonas Hanway , Dr Robert Lowth , Hannah More ...
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 Georgiana Cavendish Duchess of Devonshire
This novel was published by Hookham in three volumes, and dedicated to Georgiana's friend Lady Camden . Its subscription list, in this and the second edition (issued by Hookham in 1787, in two volumes each...

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