# Bluestocking Origin: The 1750s Salons That Named a Movement

*Culture, Art & Literature · Sofia Bellini · 2026-10-20*

## TL;DR

In the early 1750s, Elizabeth Montagu and friends like Elizabeth Vesey hosted London gatherings devoted to books and conversation. The nickname "bluestocking" is commonly traced to Benjamin Stillingfleet wearing blue woolen stockings instead of formal black silk. The label later hardened into mockery of intellectual women.

## Key facts

- Elizabeth Montagu, a wealthy and well-connected London hostess, opened her home in the early 1750s to evenings built around conversation rather than gambling and cards.
- Elizabeth Vesey was a close friend of Montagu and a fellow hostess of these informal gatherings, which drew writers, clergy, and educated men and women.
- The scholar and writer Benjamin Stillingfleet is the figure most often linked to the name, through the story that he attended in everyday blue woolen stockings.
- By the 1770s the word "bluestocking" had spread beyond the salons, and later writers turned it into a sneer at learned women.

## The Word You Use Without Knowing Where It Came From

You have probably heard someone called a bluestocking and never once wondered where the word came from. The story starts in England in the mid-18th century, when an informal women's social and educational movement took shape around a handful of London drawing rooms. No charter, no membership roll, no dues. Just people who wanted to talk about art, literature and science together, and who believed women deserved a real share in that conversation.

Picture London in the early 1750s. Two women, Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey, start opening their doors to friends who would rather talk about books than play cards. The botanist and translator Benjamin Stillingfleet was among those invited, and he turns up later in the most quoted explanation of the name.

One caution before we go further. You will often read that the word "bluestocking" appears in the Montagu-Vesey correspondence in 1756. That specific claim is unconfirmed and should not be repeated as fact. The gatherings are well documented, but pinning the earliest written use to that year and that letter is a claim the evidence does not firmly support.

What is clear is the spirit of the thing. These were not formal lectures. They were conversations, held together by mutual support and a shared appetite for learning, in a society that had very fixed ideas about what a woman should do with her mind. That tension is where the rest of this story lives.

## Blue Woolen Stockings: How Benjamin Stillingfleet Named a Movement

Benjamin Stillingfleet, a botanist and translator who moved in the same London circles as Elizabeth Montagu, is the man most often credited with giving the bluestocking circle its name. The story comes down to us through James Boswell's *The Life of Samuel Johnson*, and it turns on a single wardrobe choice: Stillingfleet wore blue worsted stockings instead of the formal silk ones expected at an evening gathering.

Boswell sets the scene with care. Around this period, he writes, fashionable hostesses were fond of throwing evening parties where clever men and women could talk together on equal footing. These gatherings, he notes, were called blue stocking clubs, and because the origin of the title was so little understood, he thought it worth explaining. Stillingfleet, one of the most distinguished members, was observed to wear blue stockings. His conversation was so good that his absence was felt as a real loss. "We can do nothing without the blue stockings," people reportedly said, and the nickname simply stuck.

Here is where the legend needs a gentle correction. A popular version holds that the men and women attending these meetings wore everyday blue woolen stockings across the board because they could not afford formal dress. That broader claim is unverified and likely embellished, a later tradition that probably grew around the single anecdote about Stillingfleet. What we can say with confidence is narrower: Stillingfleet himself was a genuine member of the circle, and his blue worsted stockings are the seed of the tale.

What the label actually signaled matters more than the fabric. It pointed to the easy, unbuttoned quality of these evenings and to the fact that good talk counted for more than fine clothes. The story behind the name, whatever its exact truth, was never about poverty. It was about a room where ideas outranked silk.

Even Boswell's tidy explanation does not settle the question. Whether his account of where the term came from is correct remains a live debate among scholars, who point to earlier or alternative roots for the word. So the blue stockings may be a charming embellishment rather than a clean etymology. Either way, the image did its work: one man's sensible wool, and a whole movement got a name.

## The Yorkshire Girl Who Would Host a Movement

Elizabeth Robinson was born in 1718 into a wealthy, well-connected Yorkshire family, and by every account she was a startlingly sharp child. She took obvious delight in lively intellectual conversation with her parents and their close circle, the kind of back-and-forth that most girls of her station were never invited into. That early appetite for argument and ideas would eventually give the story of the name one of its central figures.

Years later, Samuel Johnson paid her the compliment that has followed her ever since: she conveyed more knowledge than any woman he knew, and almost any man. The exact wording shifts from one telling to the next, but the verdict never does.

As a young woman, Elizabeth was introduced to Lady Margaret Harley, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Oxford and a woman described as genuinely intellectual. Margaret was three years older. Through her, Elizabeth met a parade of literary figures, and in Margaret's home she watched something she had rarely seen: men and women talking together as equals, trading ideas rather than compliments. In 1734 Margaret married the 2nd Duke of Portland, but the two women kept writing to each other.

In letters to Margaret, reportedly written around 1738, she confessed that she could not believe in loving a man, and that she saw marriage as little more than a practical contract. Then, in 1742, she married Edward Montagu, owner of an enormously wealthy estate and coal mines in Northumberland. He was about 28 years older than she was. The match was mutually advantageous and, at its core, loveless, though the two were companionable enough.

That marriage handed her exactly what she needed: money, standing, and a London address. From the early 1750s she began hosting intellectual gatherings, salons, at her home in London and later in Bath, and the brilliant Yorkshire girl finally had a platform worthy of her talents.

## Not a Society, Just a Circle of Friends

The bluestocking circle was never an official organization. It was an informal web of social, artistic and academic contacts, bound together by shared aims, including helping educated women sharpen their knowledge and wit and earn their own livings. By the early 1750s Elizabeth Montagu was opening her London home to these intellectual gatherings, and in later years she kept them going seasonally at Bath.

Think of an evening there: candles, tea, and a room where men and women talked as equals about books and ideas. The guest list of the day is often given as Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, David Garrick and Horace Walpole. Whether all four actually attended Montagu's own salons is unconfirmed, so treat that roster as reported rather than settled. The gatherings also carried a popular reputation for banning a single subject, politics. That rule is repeated so often it has hardened into legend, but the sources do not confirm it, and it may well be a simplification.

What the salons were not was a formal club with membership cards and minutes. Conversation, not fashion, was the currency, and that is precisely where the story of the name draws its energy.

Set that warmth against the advice books of the day. In 1774 the moralist Dr. John Gregory published *A Father's Legacy to His Daughters*, which urged women to keep any learning to themselves, hidden as a deep secret from jealous and ill-natured men. Montagu's circle answered with a different posture entirely. The title "bluestocking" came to be worn with pride, a badge proving you belonged to an intellectual elite. The old ideal of the obedient wife was openly mocked, and Montagu summed up the whole quarrel with one ironic line about the marriage bargain: "Kiss me and be silent!"

## Nine Living Muses, and the Backlash That Turned a Badge into an Insult

In 1778 the artist Richard Samuel painted a group portrait he titled "Characters in the Temple of Apollo," gathering nine of the leading bluestockings onto a single canvas. It went on show in 1779 and soon picked up a grander name: the "Nine Living Muses of Great Britain." For one bright moment, the movement had produced something close to a national monument.

Then the picture's glow faded, and the word turned sour. As the salons filled with more and more people, a patriarchal backlash set in, and "bluestocking" slid from an honor into a jeer. The very badge that had once announced a woman belonged to the intellectual elite became a way to shame her for it.

The backlash had loud voices. Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge disparaged the bluestockings, and according to the original account, William Hazlitt went further still, calling the bluestocking "the most disgusting character in society," a phrase that sinks "like the yolk of an egg" and drags its dirt down with it. The exact wording is uncertain, but the contempt behind it was real enough.

By the early 19th century the circle had dissolved, and the meaning had turned all the way over. What began as a compliment now described a woman who had supposedly sacrificed her personal life for science or a career. An honor, worn down by mockery, had become an insult.


## Frequently asked questions

**What was the Bluestocking Society and who founded it?**

The bluestockings were an informal circle of educated women and sympathetic men who gathered in England from the early 1750s to talk about literature, art and learning. Elizabeth Montagu and Elizabeth Vesey were the central hostesses, though calling them "founders" overstates how loose and unplanned the whole thing was.

**How did Benjamin Stillingfleet's blue stockings give the bluestockings their name?**

James Boswell, in his celebrated biography of Samuel Johnson, told the story that the botanist and translator Benjamin Stillingfleet wore blue worsted stockings rather than formal black silk, and that his conversation was so valued that people said, "we can do nothing without the blue stockings." Whether that anecdote is the true origin of the name remains debated.

**Why did the term bluestocking change from an honor to an insult?**

At first most women wore the label as a badge of pride. As the gatherings grew more popular, a patriarchal backlash turned it into mockery. Lord Byron and Samuel Taylor Coleridge disparaged the bluestockings, and William Hazlitt reportedly called the bluestocking "the most disgusting character in society."

**Was the Bluestocking Society an official organization?**

No. It was never formally constituted. The bluestockings were a social, artistic and academic circle bound by shared aims, namely helping educated women develop their knowledge and wit and, in some cases, earn their own living, rather than a dues-paying club with rules and officers.

**When did the Bluestocking Society dissolve and why?**

The original circle faded in the early 19th century as attitudes toward educated women shifted. By then "bluestocking" had hardened into a slur for a woman who supposedly sacrificed her personal life for science or a career, a long fall from the honor it once held.

**How did the salons challenge traditional gender roles?**

These women displayed their learning openly instead of hiding it, directly defying the moralist Dr. John Gregory, who in his 1774 book A Father's Legacy to His Daughters advised women to keep any knowledge a deep secret. Some mocked the obedient-wife role outright; Montagu's ironic line about the rule of such marriages was simply, "kiss me and be quiet!" Editorial note: Details that remain unconfirmed, including the exact circumstances behind the stockings story, are presented here as reported tradition rather than settled fact.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/bluestocking-origin-the-1750s-salons-that-named-a-movement/