The
Blue Stockings Society was a literary society led by
Elizabeth Montagu and others in the 1750s in England. Elizabeth Montagu was a social anomaly in the period because she took possession of her husband's property when he died, allowing her to have more power in her world. This society was founded by women, and included many prominent members of English society, both male and female, including
Harriet Bowdler,
Edmund Burke,
Sarah Fielding,
Samuel Johnson, and
Frances Pulteney.
M.P., an 1811
comic opera by
Thomas Moore and
Charles Edward Horn, was subtitled
The Blue Stocking. It contained a character, Lady Bab Blue, who was a parody of bluestockings. A reference to bluestockings has been attributed to
John Amos Comenius in his 1638 book, where he mentioned ancient traditions of women being excluded from
higher education, citing the
Bible and
Euripides. That second reference, though, comes from Keatinge's 1896 translation and is not present in Comenius's Latin text. The name may have been applied in the 15th century to the blue stockings worn by the members of the
Compagnie della Calza in
Venice, which then was adopted in Paris and London; in the 17th century to the
Covenanters in
Scotland, who wore unbleached woollen stockings, in contrast to the bleached or dyed stockings of the more affluent. In 1870 Henry D. Wheatley noted that Elizabeth Montagu's coterie were named "blue stockings" after the blue worsted stockings worn by the naturalist
Benjamin Stillingfleet.
William Hazlitt said, "The bluestocking is the most odious character in society...she sinks wherever she is placed, like the yolk of an egg, to the bottom, and carries the filth with her". ==Recent use==