Smarty Pants From The American Scholar

In 1748, Lord Chesterfield told his son not to expect much from women: they “are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, and sometimes wit; but for solid, reasoning good sense, I never knew in my life one who had it, or who reasoned and acted consequentially for four-and-twenty hours together.” In 1739, an anonymous pamphleteer laid out the case for Man Superior to Woman; or, a Vindication of Man’s Natural Right of Sovereign Authority over the Woman, writing that even if a woman was educated, “if this Lady is a scholar she is a very sluttish one; and the much she reads is to very little Purpose.” This was the terrain, writes the Irish historian Susannah Gibson in her new book, The Bluestockings, in which Elizabeth Montagu dared to host weekly salons about the intellectual debates of the moment—among the hottest of which was whether or not women should even be engaging in such discussions in the company of men. At Montagu’s table, Samuel Johnson rubbed elbows with the likes of the c