Bluestockings and Travel Accounts
Reading, Writing and Collecting

The Element links the world of exploration, travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon in eighteenth-century Britain.

Nataliia Voloshkova (Author)

9781108720724, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 25 March 2021

75 pages
18 x 12.5 x 0.5 cm, 0.11 kg

This Element proposes to relate the eighteenth-century world of travel and travel writing with the bluestocking salon. It locates eminent British travellers and explorers in the female-presided intellectual space and examines their multifaceted interaction with the bluestockings between 1760 and 1799. The study shows how the bluestockings acquired knowledge of the world through reading, discussing, writing and collecting travel accounts. It explores the 'social life' of manuscript and printed travel texts in the circle, their popularity and impact on the bluestockings. This Element builds upon the body of evidence provided by their published and unpublished diaries, correspondence and private library catalogues.

1. Introduction
2. Bluestockings, Travellers and Conversation
3. Reading Travelogues
4. Writing Travel Accounts
5. Collecting Travel Books.

Subject Areas: Travel writing [WTL], Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800 [DSBD], Literary studies: general [DSB], Literature: history & criticism [DS]