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Blue Stockings Society
The Blue Stockings Society, an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century, emphasised education and mutual cooperation. Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others founded it in the early 1750s as a literary discussion group, a step away from traditional, non-intellectual women's activities. Both men and women were invited to attend, including the botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet, who was not rich enough to dress properly for the occasion and appeared in everyday blue worsted stockings. The term "bluestocking" came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation rather than on fashion. History The Blue Stockings Society of England emerged in about 1750, and waned in popularity at the end of the 18th century. It was a loose organization of privileged women with an interest in education to gather together to discuss literature while inviting educated men to participate. The B ...
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Portraits In The Characters Of The Muses In The Temple Of Apollo By Richard Samuel
A portrait is a portrait painting, painting, portrait photography, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, Personality type, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a Snapshot (photography), snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. History Prehistorical portraiture Plastered human skulls were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient Levant between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the Middle East and demonstrate that the prehistoric population took great care in burying their ancestors below their homes. The skulls denote some of the earlie ...
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James Beattie (poet)
James Beattie (; 25 October 1735 – 18 August 1803) was a Scottish poet, moralist, and philosopher. Career He became schoolmaster of the parish of Fordoun in 1753. He took the position of usher at the grammar-school of Aberdeen in 1758. In 1760, he was, to his surprise, appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at Marischal College (later part of Aberdeen University) as a result of the influence exerted by his close friend, Robert Arbuthnot of Haddo. In the following year he published a volume of poems, ''The Judgment of Paris'' (1765), which attracted attention. But the two works that brought him most fame were '' An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth'', and his poem of ''The Minstrel''. The ''Essay'', intended as an answer to David Hume, had great immediate success, and led to an introduction to the King, a pension of £200, and the degree of LL.D. from Oxford. The first book of ''The Minstrel'' was published in 1771 and the second in 1774, and constitutes his true ...
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William Pulteney, 1st Earl Of Bath
William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath, (22 March 16847 July 1764) was a British Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1707 to 1742, when he was created the first Earl of Bath by King George II. Bath is sometimes stated to have been First Lord of the Treasury and British prime minister, for the shortest term ever (two days) in 1746, although most modern sources do not consider him to have held the office. Background and early career The son of William Pulteney by his first wife, Mary Floyd, he was born in March 1684 into an old Leicestershire family. He was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, matriculating on 31 October 1700. He acquired extensive classical knowledge, and on leaving Oxford made the usual tour on the continent. In 1705, he was brought into parliament by Henry Guy (former secretary of the Treasury) for the Yorkshire borough of Hedon. This seat was held by him without a break until 1734. Throughout the reign of Queen Anne ...
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Hannah More
Hannah More (2 February 1745 – 7 September 1833) was an English religious writer, philanthropist, poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, who wrote on moral and religious subjects. Born in Bristol, she taught at a school her father founded there and began writing plays. She became involved in the London literary elite and a leading Bluestocking member. Her later plays and poetry became more evangelical. She joined a group opposing the slave trade. In the 1790s she wrote Cheap Repository Tracts on moral, religious and political topics, to distribute to the literate poor (as a retort to Thomas Paine's Rights of Man). Meanwhile, she broadened her links with schools she and her sister Martha had founded in rural Somerset. These curbed their teaching of the poor, allowing limited reading but no writing. More was noted for her political conservatism, being described as an anti-feminist, a "counter-revolutionary", or a conservative feminist. Early life B ...
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Catharine Macaulay
Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge, later Graham; 23 March 1731 – 22 June 1791), was an English Whig republican historian. Early life Catharine Macaulay was a daughter of John Sawbridge (1699–1762) and his wife Elizabeth Wanley (died 1733) of Olantigh. Sawbridge was a landed proprietor from Wye, Kent, whose ancestors were Warwickshire yeomanry. Macaulay was educated privately at home by a governess. In the first volume of her ''History of England'', Macaulay claimed that from an early age she was a prolific reader, in particular of "those histories which exhibit liberty in its most exalted state in the annals of the Roman and Greek Republics... rom childhoodliberty became the object of a secondary worship". However this account is at odds with what she told her friend Benjamin Rush, to whom she described herself as "a thoughtless girl till she was twenty, at which time she contracted a taste for books and knowledge by reading an odd volume of some history, which she pick ...
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Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709  – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' calls him "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, he attended Pembroke College, Oxford until lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher, he moved to London and began writing for ''The Gentleman's Magazine''. Early works include ''Life of Mr Richard Savage'', the poems ''London'' and ''The Vanity of Human Wishes'' and the play ''Irene''. After nine years' effort, Johnson's '' A Dictionary of the English Language'' appeared in 1755, and was acclaimed as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship". Later work included essays, an annotated ''The Plays of William Shakespeare'', and the apologue ''The History of R ...
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David Garrick
David Garrick (19 February 1717 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in a number of amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's '' Richard III'', audiences and managers began to take notice. Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and a number of other roles, Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated 29 years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, three years after his retirement from Drury Lane and the stage, he was given a lavish public funeral ...
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Sarah Fielding
Sarah Fielding (8 November 1710 – 9 April 1768) was an English author and sister of the novelist Henry Fielding. She wrote ''The Governess, or The Little Female Academy'' (1749), thought to be the first novel in English aimed expressly at children. Earlier she had success with her novel ''The Adventures of David Simple'' (1744). Childhood Sarah Fielding was born at East Stour, Dorset in 1710 to Edmund Feilding '' ic' and his wife Sarah, ''née'' Gould (died 1718),''The Feminist Companion to Literature in English. Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present'', Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy, eds (London, Batsford, 1990), pp. 370–371. after Henry and Ursula; her younger siblings were Anne, Beatrice, and Edmund. Sarah's father, Edmund, the third son of John Feilding, was a military officer and relative of the Earls of Denbigh (his father, John, had been the youngest son of the 3rd Earl). Although Edmund spelled his last name "Feilding" as often as "Fi ...
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Mary Delany
Mary Delany ( Granville; 14 May 1700 – 15 April 1788) was an English artist, letter-writer, and bluestocking, known for her "paper-mosaicks" and botanic drawing, needlework and her lively correspondence. Early life Mary Delany was born at Coulston, Wiltshire, the daughter of Colonel Bernard Granville by his marriage to Mary Westcombe, loyal Tory supporters of the Stuart Crown. She was a niece of George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne, her father's brother. Mary had one older brother, Bernard (1699), known as Bunny; a younger brother Bevil, born between 1702 and 1706; and a sister, Anne (1707) who married John Dewes (D'Ewes). When Mary was young, her parents moved the family to London, and she attended a school taught by a French refugee, Mademoiselle Puelle. Mary came into close contact with the Court when she was sent to live with her aunt, Lady Stanley, who was childless – the intention being that she would eventually become a Maid of Honour.Hayden, 1980. While livi ...
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Hester Chapone
Hester Chapone ''née'' Mulso (27 October 1727, Twywell, Northamptonshire – 25 December 1801, Hadwell, Middlesex), was an English writer of conduct books for women. She became associated with the London Bluestockings. Life Hester, the daughter of Thomas Mulso (1695–1763), a gentleman farmer, and his wife (died 1747/1748), a daughter of Colonel Thomas, wrote a romance at the age of nine entitled "The Loves of Amoret and Melissa", which earned her mother's disapproval. She was educated more thoroughly than most girls in that period, learning French, Italian and Latin, and began writing regularly and corresponding with other writers at the age of 18. Her earliest published works were four brief pieces for Samuel Johnson's journal ''The Rambler'' in 1750. She was married in 1760 to the solicitor John Chapone (c. 1728–1761), the son of an earlier moral writer, Sarah Chapone (1699–1764), but she was soon widowed. Hester Chapone became associated with the learned ladies or B ...
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Margaret Bentinck, Duchess Of Portland
Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (11 February 1715 – 17 July 1785) was a British aristocrat, styled Lady Margaret Harley before 1734, Duchess of Portland from 1734 to her husband's death in 1761, and Dowager Duchess of Portland from 1761 until her own death in 1785. The duchess was the richest woman in Great Britain of her time and had the largest natural history collection in the country, complete with its own curator, the parson-naturalist John Lightfoot, and the Swedish botanist Daniel Solander. Her collection included costly art objects such as the Portland Vase. Her ambition for her collection was for it to contain and to describe every living species. She was a member of the Bluestockings, a group of social intellectuals led by women and founded by her great friend Elizabeth Montagu. Early life She was the only surviving child of the 2nd Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, bibliophile, collector and patron of the arts, and the former Lady Henrietta Holl ...
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Frances Burney
Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and later Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. In 1786–1790 she held the post as "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre d'Arblay. After a long writing career and wartime travels that stranded her in France for over a decade, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840. The first of her four novels, ''Evelina'' (1778), was the most successful and remains her most highly regarded. Most of her plays were not performed in her lifetime. She wrote a memoir of her father (1832) and many letters and journals that have been gradually published since 1889. Overview of career Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In all, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty-five volumes of journals and letters. She has gained c ...
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