Elizabeth Carter - the 1740's
from Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, September 05, 1746, page 165:
I seldom hear an agreeable air but it recalls to my mind almost every pleasing occurrence of my life, and gives me a new enjoyment of it. Every body I either love or admire, every conversation that struck me with peculiar pleasure, and every fine passage of a favourite author, the powerful magic of Mr. Handel conjures up to my thoughts. One sometimes finds an effect like this in a solitary evening walk, from a calm sky and a beautiful view of rural scenes, but the images arising from these are more faint and languid, and at best lull one into a kind of waking insensibility. On the contrary,… more >>
Elizabeth Carter, Letter from Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, September 05, 1746. In A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot from the Year 1741 to 1770: To Which are Added Letters from Mrs. Carter to Mrs. [Elizabeth] Vesey between the Years 1767 and 1787, volume 1 (London, 1808), p. 165. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1378742712 accessed: 18 December, 2024
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written by George Frideric Handel |
Experience Information
Date/Time | the 1740's |
Medium | live |
Notes
Elizabeth Carter was a member of the Bluestockings Society, educated women who met and exchanged letters about a wide variety of intellectual interests. The origin of the term may reference a gentleman who participated in the group wearing blue stockings, not the formal black stockings that convention required. He was welcomed none the less, suggesting a spirit of intellectual enquiry and companionship that changed by the Victorian era when ‘Bluestocking’ became a derogatory term directed at women interested in intellectual pursuits.