This book explores and examines the political philosophies of enlightenment women across Europe in the eighteenth century.

Bluestocking Feminism and British-German Cultural Transfer, 1750–1837 examines the processes of cultural transfer between Britain and Germany during the Personal Union, the period from 1714 to 1837 when the kings of England were simultaneously Electors of Hanover. While scholars have generally focused on the political and diplomatic implications of the Personal Union, Alessa Johns offers a new perspective by tracing sociocultural repercussions and investigating how, in the period of the American and French Revolutions, Britain and Germany generated distinct discourses of liberty even though they were nonrevolutionary countries. British and German reformists—feminists in particular—used the period’s expanded pathways of cultural transfer to generate new discourses as well as to articulate new views of what personal freedom, national character, and international interaction might be. Johns traces four pivotal moments of cultural exchange: the expansion of the book trade, the rage for translation, the effect of revolution on intra-European travel and travel writing, and the impact of transatlantic journeys on visions of reform. Johns reveals the way in which what she terms “bluestocking transnationalism” spawned discourses of liberty and attempts at sociocultural reform during this period of enormous economic development, revolution, and war.

This book comprises twelve illustrated, interdisciplinary essays on gender and material culture across the eighteenth century. These essays point to the many ways in which gender mediated and was shaped by the consumption and production of goods and elucidate the complex relationships between material and social practice in the period.

The contributions investigate the ways in which numerous institutions of English literature shape the literary field. While they cover an extensive historical field, ranging from the Early Modern period to the 18th century to the contemporary, they focus not only on literary texts, but also on extra-literary ones, including literary prizes, literary histories and anthologies, and highlight the various ways in which these negotiate the processes that constitute the literary field. All contributions assert that there is no such thing as literature outside of institutions. Great emphasis is therefore put on different acts of mediation.