Reconsidering the Bluestockings

Review from CHOICE
November 2003 Vol. 41, No. 3

The scholarship on the Bluestockings is surprisingly sparse. Only two scholarly enterprises examine the whole group: Gylvia Harcstark Myers's The Bluestocking Circle (CH May '91) and Bluestocking Feminism: Writings of the Bluestocking Circle, 1738-1785, gen. ed. Gary Kelly (6 vols., 1999), which made the group's major works available in a uniform modern edition. Pohl and Schellenberg collected ten original and diverse scholarly essays, all based on original research (especially on the thousands of manuscripts at the Huntington Library). The collection is made more useful, especially for beginners, by a description of the Huntington's collection, a set of brief biographies of the principal Bluestocking women, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works. Some essays report on solid biographical findings; others are more provocative and critical; all are readable, even for undergraduates. The volume is also both attractive and pleasingly inexpensive, making it within reach of individuals as well as to libraries. Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates and above. -- J. T. Lynch, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Newark

Review from New Perspectives on the Eighteenth Century
Spring 2004 Vol. 1, No. 1

Building upon Sylvia Harcstark Myers' 1990 The Bluestocking Circle, Pohl and Schellenberg seek to complicate scholarly understanding of the Bluestockings' place in eighteenth-century England. The editors accomplish this goal, for reading the essays together creates nuances that might otherwise be lost if one were to read them out of context from the others. . . . By packaging several perspectives together, Reconsidering the Bluestockings creates a more thorough context for future scholarship. The book is, in short, the most valuable kind of scholarship: it provokes questions rather than answers them.