Elizabeth Elstob

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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.
Line engraving with portrait of Elizabeth Elstob inside an initial letter G, by Simon Gribelin, from "An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-day of St. Gregory", 1709, which she translated from Old English. She looks towards the viewer, slightly angled to her left with her head turned to her right. She wears a dress with a low neckline, and her hair is styled with curls framing her forehead and face, while the rest hangs behind her shoulders.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Wharton
Elizabeth Elstob cited AW 's poetic achievement along with that of the far better-known Katherine Philips and Anne Finch .
Elstob, Elizabeth. The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue. J. Bowyer and C. King.
xxiv
politics Susanna Wesley
Her timing may have had to do with the death of the former James II on 3 September 1701, though she had apparently been praying for William III during his reign so far. During the...
Literary responses Catharine Trotter
Anne Kelley traces in detail successive judgements passed on Trotter (later Cockburn) by her contemporaries and by the later eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries,
Kelley, Anne. Catharine Trotter: An Early Modern Writer in the Vanguard of Feminism. Ashgate.
15-45
and delivers her own judgement that she was a radical...
Publishing Madeleine de Scudéry
This was translated into English as the first publication by scholar Elizabeth Elstob , 1708.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Family and Intimate relationships Henrietta Rouviere Mosse
The full title of Isaac Mosse's book was Enclytica, the outlines of a course of instruction on the principles of universal grammar, as deduced in an analysis of the vernacular tongue. He regretted the...
Textual Features Elizabeth Montagu
The letters of EM 's youth—to the Duchess of Portland and to her sister Sarah Scott —are sparkling, irreverent, and inventive. Some of these were conveyed via 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.
Her early claim about the...
Education Mary Jones
MJ 's brothers went to school. She herself was clearly very well read. She was taught French and Italian by a visiting master, and could translate from Italian by the age of fifteen.
Kennedy, Deborah. Poetic Sisters. Early Eighteenth-Century Women Poets. Bucknell University Press.
165
Nicholls, C. S., editor. The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons. Oxford University Press.
Jones, Mary. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Dodsley.
45
Friends, Associates Susanna Hopton
After 1689 SH became a good friend of George Hickes , antiquarian, sometime Dean of Worcester, and patron of Elizabeth Elstob . Hickes, a member of a generation younger than Hopton, was a Non-juror (one...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...

Timeline

1 April 1684: George Hickes (later a patron of Elizabeth...

Building item

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...

Building item

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...

Women writers item

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.