The Blue Stocking Society

Founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey along with several other women the Blue Stocking Society was a literary discussion group for women that flew in the face of traditional non intellectual pastimes that were deemed acceptable for women of the time to partake in.

Welcoming of both women and men the society’s name is alleged to have come from botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet who is said to have been so poor that he could not afford to wear the correct formal dress (which included black silk stockings) and would wear blue worsted stockings instead. This informal attitude towards the participants’ attire came to represent the ethos of the society as a whole, focusing on conversation over fashion.

In an era where only men went to university and women were expected to concentrate their efforts on less cerebral pastimes such as needlework and evenings spent playing cards and it was considered “unbecoming” for them to know Greek or Latin, almost immodest for them to be authors, and certainly indiscreet to own the fact The Bluestocking Society was a revolutionary step forward for women.

Extremely informal the society’s meetings had few rules other than no talk of politics and that discussions should have be based around literature and the arts, tea and biscuits would be served along with other light refreshments and even though it was a group aimed only at the privileged sections of society where women were in general better educated and would have less children than those from poorer backgrounds it is considered to be an important step in women’s equality and feminism.

In an article published on 17 April 1881 in the New York Times the Blue Stockings Society is described as “a women’s movement away from the “vice” and “passion” of gambling” which was the main form of entertainment at higher society parties. “Instead however, of following the fashion, Mrs. Montagu and a few friends Mrs. Boscawen and Mrs. Vesey, who like herself, were untainted by this wolfish passion, resolved to make a stand against the universal tyranny of a custom which absorbed the life and leisure of the rich to the exclusion of all intellectual enjoyment… and to found a society in which conversation should supersede cards.”

Members of the Blue Stocking Society would often support and encourage others ventures into literature and the group’s existence would allow many members to go on to become published authors in their own right.

However as society’s opinion on women changed the popularity of the Blue Stocking Society began to wain and it all but ceased in the early 1800s not long after its founder members Elizabeth Montagu (25 August 1800) and Elizabeth Vesey (1791) had passed away.