The author's engaging account honors the determination and charm with which her subjects seized as much freedom as society would allow them. Vivid popular history illuminating some neglected feminist pioneers.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

Spirited, lively, and scholarly....A close-up view of some notable bluestockings leaves the reader gasping at their energy.--Miranda Seymour "Literary Review"

Scholarly but accessible, vividly rendered, and a font of inspiration for the modern woman thinker.-- "The Millions"

It is a delight to read this vividly fresh celebration of mid-eighteenth-century scholars, intellectuals, and conversationalists, who dared to deviate from gender norms, a new breed of womanhood preceding Mary Wollstonecraft's claim for 'a new genus.' Susannah Gibson, an eloquent storyteller, offers a novel approach to group biography with a series of telling chapters on salons, friendship, motherhood, and love.--Lyndall Gordon, author of The Hyacinth Girl

Brilliant, earnest, quietly unconventional, the Bluestockings are the unsung pioneers of early British feminism. Their networks empowered women while their salons, stressing conversation and civility, opposed the misogynous, boozy male culture of the eighteenth century. Blending story, history, and delicious anecdote, Susannah Gibson's book opens a sparkling window onto this extraordinary society of engaged, energetic, and very witty women.--Janet Todd, author of Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden

Susannah Gibson's important, fluidly written book brings vividly to life the salons and communes, friendships and mentorships and rivalries of some of the most important figures of the English Enlightenment. It is an alien world, in some ways: of women who invite writers to move in with their families, and who throw parties every night for the leading painters and writers and politicians of their time. But it is also a magnetically attractive world, and one that shapes our own. I am so grateful for this book.--Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb, author of The Women Are Up to Something

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2024-07-23

Length: 384 pages