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.
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...
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...
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
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.
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
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
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...
