Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
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...
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
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
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...
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...
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
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...
