Bluestocking
A
bluestocking is an educated, intellectual woman. The term most often refers to a specific group of 18th-century intellectual women led by the hostess and critic Elizabeth Montagu, the "Queen of the Blues", and including Elizabeth Vesey, Hester Chapone, and the classicist Elizabeth Carter. In the following generation came Hester Lynch Piozzi, Hannah More, and Frances Burney. Until the late 18th century, the term had referred to learned people of both sexes. It subsequently was applied primarily to intellectual women, and the French equivalent
bas bleu had a similar connotation. The term later developed negative implications, and in some instances such women were stereotyped as being "frumpy". The reference to blue stockings may arise from the time when woollen worsted stockings were informal dress, in contrast to formal, fashionable black silk stockings. Curiously, the most frequent such reference is to a man, Benjamin Stillingfleet, who reportedly lacked the formal black stockings, yet still participated in the Blue Stockings Society.