Sarah Robinson Scott was a writer, translator and social reformer. While Scott’s legacy presents her as a committed Anglican philanthropist, the letters she wrote reveal her to have been a witty, even savage, commentator on eighteenth-century life.This is the first edition of Scott’s letters to be published and presents all extant copies.

Sarah Robinson Scott was a writer, translator and social reformer. While Scott’s legacy presents her as a committed Anglican philanthropist, the letters she wrote reveal her to have been a witty, even savage, commentator on eighteenth-century life.This is the first edition of Scott’s letters to be published and presents all extant copies.

Feminist scholarship and criticism has retrieved the Bluestocking women from their marginal position in 18th-century literature. This work collects the principal writings of these women, together with a selection of their letters. Each volume is annotated and all texts are edited and reset.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An illuminating group portrait of the eighteenth-century women who dared to imagine an active life for themselves in both mind and spirit. In England in the 1700s, a woman who was an intellectual, spoke out, or wrote professionally was considered unnatural. After all, as the wisdom of the era dictated, a clever woman—if there were such a thing—would never make a good wife. But a circle of women called the Bluestockings did something extraordinary: coming together in glittering salons to discuss and debate as intellectual equals with men, they fought for women to be educated and to have a public role in society. In this intimate and revelatory history, Susannah Gibson delves into the lives of these pioneering women. Elizabeth Montagu established one of the most famous salons of the Bluestocking movement, with everyone from royalty to revolutionaries clamoring for an invitation to attend. Her younger sister, Sarah Scott, imagined a female-run society and created a women’s commune. Meanwhile, Hester Thrale, who also had a salon, saved her husband’s brewery from bankruptcy and, after being widowed, married a man she loved—Italian, Catholic, and not of her social class. Other women made a name for themselves through their publications, including Catharine Macaulay, author of an eight-volume history of England, and Frances Burney, author of the audacious novel Evelina. In elegant prose, Gibson reveals the close and complicated relationships between these women, how they supported and admired each other, and how they sometimes judged and exploited one another. Some rebelled quietly, while others defied propriety with adventurous and scandalous lives. With moving stories and keen insight, The Bluestockings uncovers how a group of remarkable women slowly built up an eviscerating critique of their male-dominated world that society was not yet ready to hear.

Few American religious figures have stirred more passion among adherents and antagonists than Joseph Smith. Born in 1805 and silenced thirty-nine years later by assassins’ bullets, he dictated more than one-hundred revelations, published books of new scripture, built a temple, organized several new cities, and became the proclaimed prophet to tens of thousands during his abbreviated life. Among his many novel teachings and practices, none is more controversial than plural marriage, a restoration of the Old Testament practice that he accepted as part of his divinely appointed mission. Joseph Smith taught his polygamy doctrines only in secret and dictated a revelation in July 1843 authorizing its practice (now LDS D&C 132) that was never published during his lifetime. Although rumors and exposés multiplied, it was not until 1852 that Mormons in Brigham Young’s Utah took a public stand. By then, thousands of Mormons were engaged in the practice that was seen as essential to salvation. Victorian America saw plural marriage as immoral and Joseph Smith as acting on libido. However, the private writings of Nauvoo participants and other polygamy insiders tell another, more complex and nuanced story. Many of these accounts have never been published. Others have been printed sporadically in unrelated publications. Drawing on every known historical account, whether by supporters or opponents, Volumes 1 and 2 take a fresh look at the chronology and development of Mormon polygamy, including the difficult conundrums of the Fannie Alger relationship, polyandry, the “angel with a sword” accounts, Emma Smith’s poignant response, and the possibility of Joseph Smith offspring by his plural wives. Among the most intriguing are the newly available Andrew Jenson papers containing not only the often-quoted statements by surviving plural wives but also Jenson’s own private research, conducted in the late nineteenth century. Telling the story of Joseph Smith’s polygamy from the records of those who knew him best, augmented by those who observed him from a distance, may have produced the most useful view of all.

An exploration of Stoicism’s central role in British and American writing of the Romantic period Stoic philosophers and Romantic writers might seem to have nothing in common: the ancient Stoics championed the elimination of emotion, and Romantic writers made a bold new case for expression, adopting “powerful feeling” as the bedrock of poetry. Stoic Romanticism and the Ethics of Emotion refutes this notion by demonstrating that Romantic-era writers devoted a surprising amount of attention to Stoicism and its dispassionate mandate. Jacob Risinger explores the subterranean but vital life of Stoic philosophy in British and American Romanticism, from William Wordsworth to Ralph Waldo Emerson. He shows that the Romantic era—the period most polemically invested in emotion as art’s mainspring—was also captivated by the Stoic idea that aesthetic and ethical judgment demanded the transcendence of emotion. Risinger argues that Stoicism was a central preoccupation in a world destabilized by the French Revolution. Creating a space for the skeptical evaluation of feeling and affect, Stoicism became the subject of poetic reflection, ethical inquiry, and political debate. Risinger examines Wordsworth’s affinity with William Godwin’s evolving philosophy, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s attempt to embed Stoic reflection within the lyric itself, Lord Byron’s depiction of Stoicism at the level of character, visions of a Stoic future in novels by Mary Shelley and Sarah Scott, and the Stoic foundations of Emerson’s arguments for self-reliance and social reform. Stoic Romanticism and the Ethics of Emotion illustrates how the austerity of ancient philosophy was not inimical to Romantic creativity, but vital to its realization.

Bringing together top specialists in the field, this edited volume challenges the theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon spanning the period from the 1750s through the 1790s. On the contrary, the contributors suggest, the Bluestockings can be conceptualized as belonging to a chain of interconnected networks, taking their origin at a threshold moment in print media and communications development and extending into the present. The collection begins with a definition of the Bluestockings as a social role rather than a fixed group, a movement rather than a static phenomenon, an evolving dynamic reaching into our late-modern era. Essays include a rare transcript of a Bluestocking conversation; new, previously unknown Bluestockings brought to light for the first time; and descriptions of Bluestocking activity in the realms of natural history, arts and crafts, theatre, industry, travel, and international connections. The concluding essay argues that the Blues reimagined and practiced women’s work in ways that adapted to and altered the course of modernity, decisively putting a female imprint on economic, social, and cultural modernization. Demonstrating how the role of the Bluestocking has evolved through different historical configurations yet has structurally remained the same, the collection traces the influence of the Blues on the Romantic Period through the nineteenth century and proposes the reinvention of Bluestocking practice in the present.

This collection discusses British and Irish life writings by women in the period 1700-1850. It argues for the importance of women's life writing as part of the culture and practice of eighteenth-century and Romantic auto/biography, exploring the complex relationships between constructions of femininity, life writing forms and models of authorship.

The first examination of interconnected manuscript-exchanging coteries as an integral element of literary culture in eighteenth-century Britain. This title is also available as Open Access.

A cinematic and thrilling true story exploring the life and catastrophic marriage of Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore—“a tale of wealth, status, and privilege, laced with lust, greed, [and] pride” (The Times) “Spectacular . . . Serious, perceptive, thoughtful and—by no means least—compulsively readable.”—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post With the death of her fabulously wealthy coal magnate father, Mary Eleanor Bowes became the richest heiress in Britain. An ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, Mary grew to be a highly educated young woman, winning acclaim as a playwright and botanist. At eighteen, she married the handsome but aloof ninth Earl of Strathmore in a celebrated, if ultimately troubled, match that forged the Bowes Lyon name. Freed from this unhappy marriage by her husband’s early death, she stumbled headlong into scandal when a charming Irish soldier, Captain Andrew Robinson Stoney, flattered his way into the merry widow’s bed. When Mary heard that her gallant hero was mortally wounded in a duel defending her honor, she could hardly refuse his dying wish; four days later they were married. Yet the “captain” was not what he seemed. Staging a sudden and remarkable recovery, Stoney was revealed as a debt-ridden lieutenant, a fraudster, and a bully. Immediately taking control of Mary’s vast fortune, he squandered her wealth and embarked on a campaign of appalling violence and cruelty against his new bride. Finally, fearing for her life, Mary dared to plan an audacious escape and an even more courageous battle to reclaim her liberty and her fortune. Based on meticulous archival research, Wedlock is a gripping, addictive biography, ripped from the headlines of eighteenth-century England.