SOURCE: Myers, Sylvia Harcstark. “Elizabeth Montagu: The Making of a Female Critic.” In The Bluestocking Circle: Women, Friendship, and the Life of the Mind in Eighteenth-Century England, pp. 177-206. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.

In the following essay, Myers explores Montagu's life as it relates to the Bluestockings, including her relationship with the other members of the social circle and her efforts in literary criticism.

In the late 1740s and early 1750s Elizabeth Montagu experienced ill health, the deaths of close relatives, the collapse of her sister's marriage, and an increasing awareness of the incompatibility underlying her relations with her husband. But these sorrows and concerns did not daunt her. Again and again she made the effort to manage her interests and her relationships with her friends and with her husband in such a way as to maintain a sense of control over her life.

The solution to some of...