Description

This four-volume edition of the letters of Mrs Elizabeth Montagu (1718-1800), the 'Queen of the Bluestockings', was edited by her nephew and adopted son Matthew (1762-1831) and published in 1809-13. The daughter of wealthy parents, and well educated in history and languages, at the age of twenty-one she married Edward Montagu, a grandson of the earl of Sandwich whose income derived from northern estates and coal mines, and began to establish a London salon attended by the intellectual cream of British society, including Johnson, Burke, Garrick, Hannah More and Hester Chapone. The letters (and some correspondence from her circle) are arranged chronologically: the first two volumes cover the period from the teenaged Montagu's letters to her older friend Lady Margaret Harley (later duchess of Portland), to 1744; the second two volumes cover the period to 1761 and end with Montagu's account of the coronation of George III.