SOURCE: West, Rebecca. “Elizabeth Montagu (1720-1800).” In From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands, edited by Bonamy Dobrée, pp. 164-87. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1967.

In the following essay, originally published in 1937, West offers a critical overview of Montagu's life and works.

In every age there are certain women who, because they are feminine without being womanly, because they conform completely to the masculine notion of what a woman should be and disregard all instructions from their own nature, enjoy great material success yet leave no sense of triumph. This class was conspicuously represented in eighteenth-century England by Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, the Queen of the Blue Stockings. The world put itself out to go her way. She was extremely rich; when she built the great house which still stands across the north-west corner of Portman Square, she paid for it out of income. All...