The author's engaging account honors the determination and charm with which her subjects seized as much freedom as society would allow them. Vivid popular history illuminating some neglected feminist pioneers.-- "Kirkus Reviews"

It is a delight to read this vividly fresh celebration of mid-eighteenth-century scholars, intellectuals, and conversationalists, who dared to deviate from gender norms, a new breed of womanhood preceding Mary Wollstonecraft's claim for 'a new genus.' Susannah Gibson, an eloquent storyteller, offers a novel approach to group biography with a series of telling chapters on salons, friendship, motherhood, and love.--Lyndall Gordon, author of The Hyacinth Girl

Brilliant, earnest, quietly unconventional, the Bluestockings are the unsung pioneers of early British feminism. Their networks empowered women while their salons, stressing conversation and civility, opposed the misogynous, boozy male culture of the eighteenth century. Blending story, history, and delicious anecdote, Susannah Gibson's book opens a sparkling window onto this extraordinary society of engaged, energetic, and very witty women.--Janet Todd, author of Jane Austen and Shelley in the Garden

Susannah Gibson's important, fluidly written book brings vividly to life the salons and communes, friendships and mentorships and rivalries of some of the most important figures of the English Enlightenment. It is an alien world, in some ways: of women who invite writers to move in with their families, and who throw parties every night for the leading painters and writers and politicians of their time. But it is also a magnetically attractive world, and one that shapes our own. I am so grateful for this book.--Benjamin J. B. Lipscomb, author of The Women Are Up to Something

Fast-paced and intimate.... Gibson conjures...[the Bluestockings'] sparkling conversation, wafting out through high windows, to be borne down the centuries by the London breeze.--Francesca Wade "New York Times Book Review"

Intelligent and engrossing.... Let's give [the Bluestockings] the credit they're due, as Gibson does, persuasively.--Margaret Talbot "The New Yorker"

Vivid and absorbing.... Among the many pleasures of The Bluestockings is the reminder that history...has at its heart the personalities and ambitions of singular...women.--Meghan Cox Gurdon "Wall Street Journal"

Spirited, lively, and scholarly.... A close-up view of some notable bluestockings leaves the reader gasping at their energy.--Miranda Seymour "Literary Review"

A revelation.... Susannah Gibson tells a group history about these fascinating women, people who launched intellectual salons, founded communes, ran their husband's business better than he could and so on, all while facing the opprobrium of society.--Michael Glitz "Parade"

Scholarly but accessible, vividly rendered, and a font of inspiration for the modern woman thinker.-- "Millions"

Gibson's work is a thrilling portal into the lives of several extraordinary women in eighteenth century England and a celebration of their many achievements.--Amy Prendergast "Dublin Review of Books"

Transport[s] readers to the Bluestockings' salons, leading the reader to feel as if they are dining and conversing with guests... Informative and delightful.--Lily R. Chadwick "American Historical Review"

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Pub date: 2025-07-15

Length: 368 pages