Elizabeth Carter in Canterbury - July, 1743
from A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, page 36:
I have enclosed you a song, and the answer, which are at present the reigning topic of discourse at Canterbury and 15 miles round. If I had not heard you say you were not fond of music, I should greatly regret I could not send you the tune too, for ’tis most enchantingly pretty. Perhaps you will think it odd the answer should be called a Lampoon, but this is a word the most in fashion at Canterbury of any place I know. Every thing that people do not like, or understand, is … more >>
Miss Catherine Talbot and Mrs Elizabeth Carter, and Montagu Pennington (ed.), A Series of Letters between Mrs. Elizabeth Carter and Miss Catherine Talbot, from the Year 1741 to 1770, volume 1 (New York, 1973), p. 36. https://led.kmi.open.ac.uk/entity/lexp/1674734020501 accessed: 18 December, 2024
Listeners
Listening to
hide composers| unspecified song |
Experience Information
| Date/Time | July, 1743 |
| Medium | live |
Notes
The listening experience is found in a letter from Elizabeth Carter to her life-long dearest friend Catherine Talbot, dated 13 July 1743. Original spelling, punctuation and capitalisation retained. 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.