Fast-paced and intimate.

Intelligent and engrossing..

Deft.

Gibson’s project is to present the bluestockings in their own late-18th-century context: as brilliant thinkers determined to show that women could be every bit as rational, erudite and witty as men.

Deftly interwoven.

Engaging and elegantly written.

Susannah Gibson has put Johnson at the margins and women at the center in The Bluestockings, a vivid and absorbing series of interwoven biographies of some of the era’s most fascinating and accomplished females.

Fascinating.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written.

The author’s engaging account honors the determination and charm with which her subjects seized as much freedom as society would allow them. Vivid popular history illuminating some neglected feminist pioneers..