Blue Stockings Society
The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century. The society emphasized education and mutual co-operation rather than the individualism which marked the French version.
The Society was founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others as a women's literary discussion group, a revolutionary step away from traditional, non-intellectual, women's activities. They invited various people to attend, including botanist, translator and publisher Benjamin Stillingfleet. One story tells that Stillingfleet was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings, so he attended in everyday blue worsted stockings. The term came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion.
Read more about Blue Stockings Society: History, Purpose, Notable Members
Famous quotes containing the words blue, stockings and/or society:
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In noiseless tumult, break and wave and flow,”
—Rupert Brooke (1887–1915)
“Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced,
No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled,
Ungartered, and down-gyved to his ankle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so piteous in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speak of horrors.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The solitary knows the essence of the thought, the scholar in society only its fair face.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)