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Text File  |  1992-09-03  |  515b  |  13 lines
  1. Term, often disparaging, for a learned woman.
  2. It originated in 1750 in England with the
  3. literary gatherings of Elizabeth Vesey
  4. (1715-91), the wife of an Irish MP, in Bath,
  5. and Elizabeth Montagu, a writer and patron,
  6. in London. According to the novelist, Fanny
  7. Burney, the term arose when the poet Benjamin
  8. Stillingfleet protested that he had nothing
  9. formal to wear. She told him to come in his
  10. `blue stockings' - that is, ordinary clothes.
  11. The regulars at these gatherings became known
  12. as the Blue Stocking Circle.
  13.