Elizabeth Elstob

29 September 1683 - 03 June 1756

Standard Name: Elstob, Elizabeth

Birth Name: Elizabeth Elstob

Pseudonym: A Person of the Same Sex

Pseudonym: Mrs Frances Smith

EE is noteworthy as the first female scholar in the newly opening field of the Old English (or Anglo-Saxon) language. She was also a translator, a biographer, and a promoter of learning for women and of the study of women's history and culture: in short, a feminist.

Full profile

Connections

Connections	Author name Sort descending	Excerpt
Textual Production	Mary Astell	About the same year MA seems to have earnestly solicited some Learned Ladies of her Acquaintance to contribute their assistance towards Compiling a Book of Natural Philosophy. Ballard, George. Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain. Editor Perry, Ruth, Wayne State University Press. 426 Apparently she divided the subject up and...
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Astell	MA influenced a whole generation of writing women: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Mary Chudleigh , Elizabeth Thomas , Judith Drake , Damaris Masham (although Masham's opinions were markedly different), Elizabeth Elstob , and Jane Barker
Friends, Associates	Mary Astell	Elizabeth Hutcheson (an associate of nonjuring devotional writer William Law , as was Hastings) later became MA 's executor. Her friendship with Lady Chudleigh was conducted largely by letter, since Chudleigh lived in Devon. Astell...
Occupation	Mary Astell	During the 1690s, long before her involvement with a charity school for poor girls, MA apparently hoped to found a community of serious-minded, self-educating, middle-class, single women, of the kind she recommends in A Serious...
Intertextuality and Influence	Mary Astell	Among those directly influenced by this work were Judith Drake , Elizabeth Thomas , Mary, Lady Chudleigh , and Elizabeth Elstob . Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. University of Chicago Press. 106 George Berkeley 's use of long passages from this text, unattributed, in...
Literary responses	Mary Astell	The Tatler fastens on Astell's age, her virginity, and her assumed incompetence in practical or worldly matters. A further attack followed on 3 September, which linked her name with those of Elstob and Manley
Reception	Anne Bacon	AB 's reputation was known to women from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century who were alert to the historical achievements of their own sex: Bathsua Makin , Elizabeth Elstob , Mary Deverell
Family and Intimate relationships	Dorothea Celesia	DC 's stepmother, born Lucy Elstob , was a distant relation of the scholar Elizabeth Elstob . Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford. Edward Gibbon reported that she had intellectual ability but was a talkative, positive, passionate, conceited creature, and that...
Cultural formation	Sarah Chapone	As a country clergyman's daughter SC was an Anglican of the English professional class. Her correspondence with John Wesley bears witness to the strength and immediacy of her Christian faith, but she did not agree...
Friends, Associates	Sarah Chapone	SC was a great networker. Having met George Ballard , a local man (perhaps because her sister was a patient of his mother, who was a midwife), she introduced him to Elizabeth Elstob and to...
Textual Production	Sarah Chapone	SC had an important role in George Ballard 's pioneering work of women's history and women's biography. She introduced him to an even more important influence, Elizabeth Elstob ; she helped in his research; and...
Friends, Associates	Mary Delany	As an unusually talented woman moving in fashionable and high-culture circles, the future MD knew almost everybody of interest during her lifetime, including literary celebrities. She was a good friend of the Bluestocking group, and...
Friends, Associates	Anne Finch	AF enjoyed personal friendships with a number of distinguished men, among them Bishop Thomas Ken . She valued female friendship very highly; women friends figure prominently in her poetry. Lady Catherine Jones , to whom...
Textual Features	Jane Harvey	In addition to quotation from Milton , Pope , and Thomson , this book has a Sterne an flavour, with passages titled from sights (like The Theatre Royal and The Merchants's Court) alternating with...
Textual Features	Mary Hays	Though occasionally sketchy (it gives Elizabeth Elstob , for instance, four lines), this is a work of real research, from a consistently feminist point of view. MH investigates the question of women in power with...

Timeline

1 April 1684

George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth Elstob ) preached at St Bridget's Church in London a sermon on almsgiving which made particular mention of charities to benefit women, including schools and colleges along the...

1714

Following the death of Mary Kettilby , her executrix published her A Collection of Above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery; for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses.

23 November 1752

George Ballard dated his preface to Memoirs of Several Ladies of Great Britain . . . (better known as Memoirs of Eminent Ladies); it was published that year.

Texts

Elstob, Elizabeth, and Charles Peake. An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1956.

Ælfric, Abbot of Eynesham,. An English-Saxon Homily on the Birthday of St. Gregory. Translator Elstob, Elizabeth, W. Bowyer, 1709.

Scudéry, Madeleine de. An Essay Upon Glory. Translator Elstob, Elizabeth, Printed for J. Morphew, 1708.

Elstob, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. An Apology for the Study of Northern Antiquities, edited by Charles Peake, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, 1956, p. i - v.

Elstob, Elizabeth, and George Ballard. “Notes”. Ballard MS 64.

Elstob, Elizabeth. Some Testimonies of Learned Men. W. Bowyer, 1713.

Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King, 1715.