Element contents
Bluestockings and Travel Accounts
Reading, Writing and Collecting
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 January 2021
Summary
This Element proposes to relate the eighteenth-century world of travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon. It locates eminent British travellers and explorers in the female-presided intellectual space and examines their multifaceted interaction with the bluestockings between 1760 and 1799. The study shows how the bluestockings acquired knowledge of the world through reading, discussing, writing and collecting travel accounts. It explores the 'social life' of manuscript and printed travel texts in the circle, their popularity and impact on the bluestockings. This Element builds upon the body of evidence provided by their published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and private library catalogues.
Keywords
- Type
- Element
- Information
- Online ISBN: 9781108767514Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication: 25 March 2021
References
Primary Sources
Correspondence, 1743–1826. Mary Hamilton Papers. University of Manchester Library. GB 133 HAM/1.Google Scholar
Dickenson Family of Birch Hall. Preston, Lancashire Archives. DDX 274.Google Scholar
Hester Lynch Piozzi, Catalogue of the Books at Brynbella, 1806–1813. Thrale-Piozzi Manuscripts. University of Manchester Library. GB 133 Eng MS 612Google Scholar
Manuscript Diaries, 1776–1797. Mary Hamilton Papers. University of Manchester Library. GB 133 HAM/2Google Scholar
Secondary Sources
‘A Catalogue of the Excellent and Genuine Household Furniture … Also, the Extensive and Well-Selected Library, Containing near 3000 volumes … of Mrs. Piozzi … which will be Sold by Auction, by Mr. Squibb, on the Premises, on Wednesday the 8th of May 1816’ in Sale Catalogues of the libraries of Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Thrale (Mrs. Piozzi) and James Boswell (New Castle, DE, 1993), pp. 47–139.Google Scholar
A Catalogue of the Library, Splendid Books of Prints, Poetical and Historical Tracts, of David Garrick, Esq Removed from his Villa at Hampton, and House on the Adelphi Terrace, with the Modern Works Added thereto by Mrs. Garrick, which will be Sold by Auction, by Mr. Sauders at his Great Room, “The Poets’ Gallery,” No. 39, Fleet Street, on Wednesday, April 23d, 1823 …Google Scholar
A Later Pepys: The Correspondence of Sir William Weller Pepys, ed. Gaussen, A.C.C., 2 vols. (London and New York: John Lane, 1904).Google Scholar
A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, 4 vols. (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1809).Google Scholar
Aspinall-Oglander, C., Admiral’s Widow: Being the Life and Letters of the Hon. Mrs. Edward Boscawen From 1761 to 1805 (London: The Hogarth Press, 1942).Google Scholar
‘Catalogue of the Library, Pictures, Prints, Coins, Plate, China, and other Valuable Curiosities, the Property of Mrs Hester Lynch Piozzi, deceased, to be sold by Auction …’ in Sale Catalogues of the libraries of Samuel Johnson, Hester Lynch Thrale (Mrs. Piozzi) and James Boswell (New Castle, DE, 1993), pp. 141–212.Google Scholar
Crabbe, G., ‘The Library’ in Ward, A.W. (ed.), Poems by George Crabbe, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1905), pp. 100–18.Google Scholar
D’Arblay, M., Diary and Letters of Madame D’Arblay, 6 vols. (London: Henry Colburn, 1842–1843).Google Scholar
D’Arblay, M. Memoirs of Doctor Burney, Arranged From His Own Manuscripts, From Family Papers, and From Personal Recollections, 3 vols. (London: Edward Moxon, 1832).Google Scholar
Gilpin, W., ‘An account of the Revd Mr Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre in New Forest, written by himself’ in Jackson, W. (ed.), Memoirs of Dr. Richard Gilpin, of Scaleby Castle in Cumberland (London and Carlisle: B. Quaritch, C. Thurnam, 1879), pp. 109–53.Google Scholar
Letters from Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, to Mrs. Montagu, between the Years 1755 and 1800, 3 vols. (London: F.C. and J. Rivington, 1817).Google Scholar
More, H., ‘The Bas Bleu: or, Conversation’ in More, H., Florio: A Tale, for Fine Gentlemen and Fine Ladies: and, The Bas Bleu; or, Conversation: Two Poems (London: Cadell, 1786), pp. 65–89.Google Scholar
Pennington, M., Memoirs of the Life of Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, with a New Edition of Her Poems, 2 vols. (London: Rivington, 1816).Google Scholar
Piozzi, H.T., Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy and Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Rexdale: Ambassador Books Limited, 1967).Google Scholar
Roberts, W., Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Hannah More, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1835).Google Scholar
The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs. Delany, ed. Llanover, Lady, 3 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1861–1862).Google Scholar
The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. By a Society of Gentlemen, vol. 68 (London: A. Hamilton, 1789).Google Scholar
The European Magazine, and London Review: Containing the Literature, … by Philological Society of London, vol. 16 (London: J. Sewell, 1789).Google Scholar
The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson, eds. Tyson, M. and Guppy, H. (Manchester: The Manchester University Press, 1932).Google Scholar
The Library of Mrs. Elizabeth Vesey 1715–1791 (Newcastle-on-Tyne: William H. Robinson, 1926).Google Scholar
The Piozzi Letters: Correspondence of Hester Lynch Piozzi, 1784–1821 (formerly Mrs. Thrale), ed. Bloom, E.A. and Bloom, L.D., 6 vols. (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989–2002).Google Scholar
The Posthumous Works of Mrs. Chapone, 2 vols. (London: John Murray and A. Constable, 1807).Google Scholar
Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs. Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs. Piozzi) 1776–1809, ed. Balderston, K.C., 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942).Google Scholar
Walpole, H., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence, eds. Lewis, W.S., et al., 48 vols. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1937–1983).Google Scholar
Wraxall, W., Historical Memoirs of My Own Time, 2 vols. (London: Cadell and Davies, 1815).Google Scholar
Barrows, H., ‘Introduction’ in Piozzi, H.T. (ed.), Observations and Reflections made in the Course of a Journey Through France, Italy and Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Rexdale: Ambassador Books Limited, 1967), pp. vii–xxx.Google Scholar
Batten, C.L., Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).Google Scholar
Borm, J., ‘Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology’ in Hooper, G. and Youngs, T. (eds.), Perspectives on Travel Writing (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), pp. 13–26.Google Scholar
Brant, C., Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture (Chippenham and Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).Google Scholar
Brewer, J., ‘Reconstructing the Reader: Prescriptions, Texts and Strategies on Anna Larpent’s Reading’ in Raven, J., Small, H. and Tadmor, N. (eds.), The Practice and Representation of Reading in England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 226–45.Google Scholar
Bridges, R., ‘Bruce, James (1730–1794): British Traveller’ in Speake, J. (ed.), Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), pp. 130–1.Google Scholar
Buzard, J., ‘The Grand Tour and after (1660–1840) in Hulme, P. and Youngs, T. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 37–52.Google Scholar
Clifford, J.L., Hester Lynch Piozzi (Mrs. Thrale), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987).Google Scholar
Eger, E., Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism (Chippenham and Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).Google Scholar
Ellis, M., ‘Reading Practices in Elisabeth Montagu’s Epistolary Network of the 1750s’ in Eger, E. (ed.), Bluestockings Displayed: Portraiture, Performance and Patronage, 1730–1830 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 213–32.Google Scholar
Glückler, J., Lazega, E. and Hammer, I., ‘Exploring the Interaction of Space and Networks in the Creation of Knowledge: An Introduction’ in Glückler, J, Lazega, E and Hammer, I (eds.), Knowledge and Networks (Springer Open, 2017). DOI:10.1007/978–3-319–45023-0, pp. 1–21.Google Scholar
Heller, D., and Heller, S., ‘A Copernican Shift; or, Remapping the Bluestocking Heavens’ in Heller, D. (ed.), Bluestockings Now! The Evolution of a Social Role (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 17–54.Google Scholar
Miller, D.P., ‘Between Hostile Camps: Sir Humphry Davy’s Presidency of the Royal Society of London, 1820–1827’, The British Journal for the History of Science, 16 (1983), 1–47.Google Scholar
Osterhammel, J., Unfabling the East: The Enlightenment’s Encounter with Asia (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018).Google Scholar
Pelling, M., ‘Collecting the World: Female Friendship and Domestic Craft at Bulstrode Park’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41.1 (2018), 101–20.Google Scholar
Pohl, N., and Schellenberg, B.A., ‘Introduction: A Bluestocking Historiography’ in Pohl, N. and Schellenberg, B.A. (eds.), Reconsidering the Bluestockings (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2003), pp. 1–20.Google Scholar
Schellenberg, B.A., ‘Bluestocking Women and the Negotiation of Oral, Manuscript, and Print Cultures’ in Labbe, J.M. (ed.), The History of British Women’s Writing, 1750–1830 (Chippenham and Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 63–83.Google Scholar
Schellenberg, B.A. ‘Reading in an Epistolary Community in Eighteenth-Century England’ in Sedo, D.R. (ed.), Reading Communities from Salons to Cyberspace (Chippenham and Eastbourne: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 25–43.Google Scholar
Secord, J.A., ‘How Scientific Conversation Became Shop Talk’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, 17 (2007), 129–56.Google Scholar
Stefanelli, M.A., ‘Elizabeth Vesey and the Art of Educating Oneself, Between London and Lucan’, Studi Irlandesi: A Journal of Irish Studies, 3 (2013), 323–34.Google Scholar
Thell, A.M., Minds in Motion: Imagining Empiricism in Eighteenth-Century British Travel Literature (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
Thompson, C. ‘Journeys to Authority: Reassessing Women’s Early Travel Writing, 1763–1862’, Women’s Writing, 24.2 (2017), 131–50, DOI: 10.1080/09699082.2016.1207915.Google Scholar
Tobin, B.F., ‘Bluestockings and the Cultures of Natural History’ in Heller, D. (ed.), Bluestockings Now! The Evolution of a Social Role (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 55–69.Google Scholar
Towsey, M., ‘First Steps in Associational Reading: Book Use and Sociability at the Wigtown Subscription Library, 1795–9’, The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 104.3 (2009), 455–95.Google Scholar
Towsey, M. ‘“I can’t resist sending you the book”: Private Libraries, Elite Women, and Shared Reading Practices in Georgian Britain’, Library & Information History, 29.3 (2013), 210–22.Google Scholar
Towsey, M. ‘Women as Readers and Writers’ in Ingrassia, C. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Women’s Writing in Britain, 1660–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 21–36.Google Scholar
Turner, K., British Travel Writers in Europe 1750–1800: Authorship, Gender and National Identity (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2001).Google Scholar
Tyson, M., and Guppy, H., ‘Introduction’ in Tyson, M. and Guppy, H. (eds.), The French Journals of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson (Manchester: The Manchester University Press, 1932), pp. 1–66.Google Scholar
Voloshkova, N., ‘“My friend Mr. H. Walpole”: Mary Hamilton, Horace Walpole and the Art of Conversation’, Image [&] Narrative, 18.3 (2017), 94–106. Accessed at www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/1600/1261Google Scholar
Voloshkova, N. ‘The Dutiful Daughter: Mary Hamilton’s Journal of her Visit to Spa in 1776’ in Corfield, P.J. and Hannan, L. (eds.), Hats off, Gentlemen! Changing Arts of Communication in the Eighteenth Century (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2017), pp. 89–108.Google Scholar
Williams, A., The Social Life of Books: Reading Together in the Eighteenth-Century Home (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2017).Google Scholar
- 5
- Cited by