Academics from across the world are converging on Swansea to deliver lectures about social networking, eighteenth-century style.
‘Bluestockings: The Social Network,’ will be held in the James Callaghan Lecture Theatre, Swansea University 10-6.30pm on Friday 3rd June, and the National Waterfront Museum, Swansea, 11am on Saturday 4th June.
Christened “Queen of the Bluestockings” by Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Montagu attracted the leading writers, politicians and artists of her day to her sparkling London assemblies, where she placed a new emphasis on conversation as a pleasurable and enlightened pursuit.
Her 8,000 extant letters are held in the British Library, the Bodleian and the Huntington Library. Less than a quarter of these documents have been published until now, and most only in partial archaic print selections.
The conference forms part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council [AHRC] funded project ‘Elizabeth Montagu’s Letters’: the ultimate goal of which is to electronically publish and edit Montagu’s correspondence.
The two-day conference will see scholars attending from across the world to deliver papers about the female intellectuals and writers she brought together.
Bluestockings: The Social Network on June 3rd will include plenaries by Professor Betty Schellenberg (Simon Fraser University) and Professor Felicity Nussbaum (UCLA).
Swansea’s National Waterfront Museum will host Saturday’s public lecture, in conjunction with the Swansea Branch of the Historical Association, featuring two papers on ‘Bluestocking Businesswomen’: Les Turnbull on ‘Elizabeth Montagu and Coalmining in the North-East’; and Michael Franklin on ‘Hester Thrale and Thrale’s Brewery, Southwark’.
Further conferences will follow: ‘Editing Bluestocking Manuscripts’ in the Huntington Library California in April 2012, and ‘Writing Materials: Women of Letters from Enlightenment to Modernity’ in King’s College London and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in November 2012.
