Catharine Macaulay's Republican Enlightenment

Bluestockings: Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism explores the cultural history of women's literary and intellectual activity in Britain between 1750 and 1812. Richard Samuel's painting, The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (1779), forms the starting point and guiding motif of the book. Samuel depicted Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Griffith, Elizabeth Carter, Charlotte Lennox, Elizabeth Linley, Angelica Kauffman, Catharine Macauley, Anna Barbauld and Hannah More. Together these women formed an important network of artists and intellectuals, who contributed to the central cultural transformations of their time.