Bluestocking

A bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman. The term most often refers to a specific group of 18th-century intellectual women led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800), the “Queen of the Blues”, and including Elizabeth Vesey (1715-91), Hester Chapone (1727-1801), and the classicist Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806). In the following generation came Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821), Hannah More (1745-1833), and Frances Burney (1752-1840).