A recently published book attempts to bring to life an important feminist movement of the 18th century. It is a movement that author and professor Deborah Heller would like to connect to modern feminism.
Heller, a professor of English at Western New Mexico University who has published extensively on the Bluestockings, edited and wrote the introduction and first chapter for the newly published, nine-essay book titled Bluestockings Now!.
“The book challenges the old theory that the eighteenth-century British intellectual women known as the Bluestockings were an isolated phenomenon,” said Heller. “Actually, the Bluestockings started a trend of women-centered activism that has continued through time up to the present day. And one of the purposes of the book is to kindle interest in the potential for Bluestocking activism in the future.”
Heller highlights the group’s practices of networking and initiating social change. She calls the group torchbearers of modern feminism for their efforts in fighting for the emancipation of slaves and equality for women among other social causes.
“I am fascinated by the way the Bluestockings used networks to get things done,” explained Heller. “One of the main messages of the book is that the Bluestockings tapped into the power of social networks well before the age of Facebook and other electronic social media.”
Heller is currently working on a biography of Elizabeth Vesey, an early Bluestocking who invented the term. In her research, Heller has discovered original manuscripts of Vesey’s letters to Bluestocking leader Elizabeth Montagu, which she has edited and plans to publish.
“The Bluestocking women had a genius to negotiate traditional women’s work and women’s roles into new, effective directions,” said Heller. “They were doers. They got things done.”
Bluestockings Now! may be purchased online on Amazon and through its publisher site www.ashgate.com.