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This chapter looks at some women who were claimed by their contemporaries as examples to the nation or as women who benefited the public. It begins with Elizabeth Burnet, who was involved in the religious revival following the Glorious Revolution. It then discusses the critic, patron, and hostess Elizabeth Montagu, arguing that she saw herself as part of a patriotic pantheon of women and enjoyed describing herself in relation to Elizabeth I, Amazons, businesswomen, farmers, coalminers, witches, Lady Bountiful, and other types of woman. Catherine Talbot was a patriotic and religious exemplar in a very different way: part of the household of a clergyman who became archbishop, she was closely involved in Church matters and wrote fascinating journals. The chapter concludes by discussing Talbot’s journals and her criticism of Samuel Richardson’s novel Sir Charles Grandison.

This chapter discusses Hannah More's transition from playwright to Evangelical activist. She was now part of the bluestocking circle, a friend of Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter, and was depicted in Richard Samuel's The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779) as Melpomene, the muse of tragedy. The Bas Bleu, her poem that celebrated the bluestockings, was praised by Johnson. She became one of the many female friends and correspondents of Horace Walpole and her Bishop Bonner's Ghost was the last work to be printed by his Strawberry Hill press. She also tried to rescue a madwoman known as ‘Louisa’ or ‘the Lady of the Haystack’. Her patronage of Ann Yearsley, the ‘Bristol milkwoman’ was an ignominious failure. Her purchase of Cowslip Green near Wrington in Somerset was a sign that she was turning her back on fashionable Society.

This chapter examines the Bluestockings’ role in the development of the Scottish Enlightenment’s cross-cultural theories of human development and in the popularization of their literary equivalent, Macpherson’s Ossian poems. In addition to recovering the epistolary record of Elizabeth Montagu’s influence on major figures of the Scottish Enlightenment as well as the popular Ossianic feasts she incorporated into her London salons, it discusses the Ossianic imitations of Catherine Talbot, Montagu’s friend and contemporary. Montagu’s Ossian-themed feasts—attended by James Macpherson, other Scottish literati, and her Bluestocking circle—enacted the equivalent social relationships and produced the refined social sentiments conjectured in Macpherson’s poems and theorized in the Scottish Enlightenment. Montagu’s correspondence documents the Bluestockings’ responses to the work of their Scottish contemporaries and their contribution to the new maps of historical development generated by the Scots at mid-century. The final portion of this chapter argues that Catherine Talbot tested this emergent historical consciousness in her Ossianic imitations, which reflect on the Seven Years War and women’s role in the civilizing process.

Between 1774 and his death in 1779, Hannah More was a close friend of David Garrick and his wife, Eva Marie Veigel, and her account of his retirement from the stage in the same year is one of the best sources for this important moment in the history of the theatre. She also became friends Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the bluestocking, Elizabeth Montagu It was thanks to Garrick that her tragedy, Percy, was performed at the Covent Garden Theatre in 1777 to great acclaim. In the same year, she began her career as a conduct book writer with the publication of her Essays on Various Subjects Principally Designed for Young Ladies. Garrick's death in 1779 caused a prolonged crisis. Her play The Fatal Falsehood was poorly received and led to accusations of plagiarism.

This chapter discusses the gender politics of ‘bluestocking philosophy’. The idea of a single, unified conceptualization of what constituted a bluestocking and what was understood as a bluestocking philosophy is somewhat misleading, as the idea of a single voice emerging from this group is almost a contradiction in terms. What can be identified is who made up the bluestocking circles and what they aspired to be and to do. Elizabeth Montagu was a central figure in the development of bluestocking circles and, along with Elizabeth Vesey and Frances Boscawen, helped to forge a public identity for women public intellectuals through Montagu's own scholarship as well as her support for other women writers. The early bluestocking circles were not established as a vehicle for promoting equity or women's rights, or even rights of citizenship. However, they played an important role in the second half of the 18th century in entrenching cultural and social transformation into the social system. In addition, they ‘played a crucial role in a widening and defining of women's social roles in the eighteenth century’.

This chapter explores the idea of the bluestockings and other women writers and how they were partially enfranchised by the expansion of print culture in the 18th century. Many of the bluestockings were published writers. Indeed, Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Carter showed that women could succeed in areas traditionally defined as areas where men excelled. Regardless of the success of these women writers — and probably as a result of it — at the start of the 19th century, the combined social and intellectual prominence of so many intelligent women was responded to with both resentment and disgust by many men. Nevertheless, the establishment of a recognized and significant presence of women in the ‘world of letters’ paved the way for a wide range of social and political commentary from women writers such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, and, later, Virginia Woolf.

Continuing on from chapter 2, this chapter charts the Duke of Buccleuch’s life and career on his return from his Grand Tour in 1766, including his marriage to Lady Elizabeth Montagu, the death of his stepfather, Charles Townshend, the end of his minority and the full inheritance of his estates, and his emergence into Scottish public life. In particular, it focuses on the Duke’s decision to base himself in Scotland, his initial attempts to reform the management of his estates and the key role played by Adam Smith during this period. The influence of Smith’s ideas on the Duke’s choice of career and attempted reforms are examined in detail, as is the role of the Duke’s reforms in the passing of the general Entail Act of 1770. Finally, the Duke’s and Smith’s involvement in the aftermath of the failure of the Ayr Bank in 1772 is also scrutinised.

The discussion of the letters involves the history of the appearance of the bulk of these letters at auction in 1992, the earlier preservation of the correspondence by Macaulay’s female descendants, and the contents of other family materials not included in this edition. This section points to evidence for an earlier attempt to edit the correspondence and outlines reasons for believing that there must have existed other letters, preserved by Macaulay’s descendants, which are missing from the correspondence as it has currently come down to us. Although Macaulay wrote during a period in which some of her acquaintances excelled in the art of familiar letter writing, her own letters reveal little of her domestic or inner life.