In this book, an international team of specialists examines the dynamic relation between women and the public sphere between 1700 and 1830. Drawing on literary and visual evidence, contributors highlight the range of women's cultural activity during the period, from historiography, publishing and translation to philosophical and political writing. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere examines the history of the public spaces women occupied, raising questions of scandal and display, improvement, virtue and morality in the context of the production and consumption of culture by women in eighteenth-century England.

The conversation parties of the bluestockings, held to debate contemporary ideas in eighteenth-century Britain, were vital in encouraging female artistic achievement. The bluestockings promoted links between learning and virtue in the public imagination, inventing a new kind of informal sociability that combined the life of the senses with that of the mind. This collection of essays, by leading scholars in the fields of literature, history and art history, provides an interdisciplinary treatment of bluestocking culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first academic volume to concentrate on the rich visual and material culture that surrounded and supported the bluestocking project, from formal portraits and sculptures to commercially reproduced prints. By the early twentieth century, the term 'bluestocking' came to signify a dull and dowdy intellectual woman, but the original bluestockings inhabited a world in which brilliance was valued at every level and women were encouraged to shine and even dazzle.

The conversation parties of the bluestockings, held to debate contemporary ideas in eighteenth-century Britain, were vital in encouraging female artistic achievement. The bluestockings promoted links between learning and virtue in the public imagination, inventing a new kind of informal sociability that combined the life of the senses with that of the mind. This collection of essays, by leading scholars in the fields of literature, history and art history, provides an interdisciplinary treatment of bluestocking culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first academic volume to concentrate on the rich visual and material culture that surrounded and supported the bluestocking project, from formal portraits and sculptures to commercially reproduced prints. By the early twentieth century, the term 'bluestocking' came to signify a dull and dowdy intellectual woman, but the original bluestockings inhabited a world in which brilliance was valued at every level and women were encouraged to shine and even dazzle.

In this interdisciplinary volume, an international team of specialists examine the dynamic relation between women and the public sphere between 1700 and 1830. Drawing on literary and visual evidence, contributors highlight the range and diversity of women's cultural activity during the period, from historiography, publishing and translation to philosophical and political writing. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere examines the history of the public spaces women occupied, raising questions of scandal and display, improvement, virtue and morality in the context of the production and consumption of culture by women in eighteenth-century England. The contribution of educated women to the British Enlightenment and the role of translation and exchange between European intellectual movements in shaping ideas of nationhood is also addressed. This book offers a comprehensive account of women's philosophical and political reflections on the nature of their place in the public sphere.

Feminist scholarship and criticism has retrieved the Bluestocking women from their marginal position in 18th-century literature. This work collects the principal writings of these women, together with a selection of their letters. Each volume is annotated and all texts are edited and reset.