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Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century Amy Prendergast London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, ISBN: 9781137512703; 250pp.; Price: £55.00 Reviewer: Dr Rachel Wilson Citation: Dr Rachel Wilson, review of Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century, (review no. 1897) DOI: 10.14296/RiH/2014/1897 Date accessed: 12 August, 2023
following is all quoted material from review:
several distinct types of salon: the Bluestocking model in operation from roughly the 1750s single-author salons of the later 18th century. Bluestockings (a term coined to describe intellectual men and more particularly women) hosted salons which promoted the work of their guests and assisted new authors in attaining recognition. By contrast, Prendergast explains, single-author salons were much more focused on the literary outputs of their hostesses, though they also made time for the work of other published authors (p. 140). Other salons fell into neither category, having no Bluestocking connections, yet a broader reach than single-author gatherings (pp. 66–71).
Prendergast rejects the idea that ‘Scotland and the Scottish Enlightenment were untouched by salon culture’ (p. 46), though she does believe that Scottish salons appeared later than those in England and offered ‘significantly less support for published female authors’ (p. 71).
Elizabeth Vesey and her salons in England and Ireland other women who shuttled between the two countries, such as Anne Dawson, née Fermor and Anne Donnellan
the Anglo-Irish Bluestockings, whose bi-nationality was enhanced by their place ‘as “importers” or cultural intermediaries for these exchanges’ (p. 101).
Irish salon of Elizabeth Rawdon, the English-born countess of Moira and a woman named by Prendergast as ‘one of the only rivals for the title of Ireland’s most important salon hostess during Vesey’s period of influence’ (pp. 83–4). As well as discussing the countess’s own publications and the help she gave to other female writers, Prendergast also shows the heavy emphasis Moira’s salon placed upon Irish ‘antiquarianism’ (that is the study of ‘the language, customs, and cultures of ancient Ireland’) and ‘associational antiquarianism’ (p. 112).
In chapter five, single-author salons take centre stage as the author shifts the focus to provincial rather than urban salons and once again moves between Ireland and England to look at gatherings hosted by women, including Maria Edgeworth and the less familiar and underappreciated Anna Miller.
The salonnières, it emerges, were hyper-competitive and waspish, catering to an almost exclusively male guest list and enduring an ‘antithetical relationship’ with each other. Their British and Irish neighbours, however, preferred to create ‘a distinctly collaborative network’ and welcomed a gender neutral company (p. 50). This modus operandi remained in force until the early 19th century, when it became more common in newly formed British salons to have ‘a central female hostess surrounded by male participants’ (p. 71). In reflecting further upon who was admitted, Prendergast also argues for a kind of limited meritocracy, if such a phrase can be allowed, which extended across Ireland, Britain and France. Participants were typically drawn from the middling and upper orders, but at the lower end of this spectrum in particular, only those with true ability were welcomed, though some still suffered from feelings of inadequacy when faced with their more famous salon companions (p. 88). For those aspiring writers, male or female, who were fortunate enough to make the cut, salons (barring single-author gatherings) were an invaluable source of patrons and patronesses and a place where unpublished work was circulated, critiqued and edited, thus providing ‘a professional network and ultimately an influential audience’ for such writers (p. 102). For female participants and the hostess, a further benefit was the rare opportunity salons presented for them to engage in ‘associational life’, an idea which is frequently reiterated throughout the book and juxtaposed against the many additional forms of ‘associational’ sociability available to men, such as coffee houses and contemporary clubs and societies (pp. 2–3). Elizabeth Vesey’s home at Lucan House and a fascinating study of the irregular seating plans Vesey employed to keep her gatherings from becoming stale. As a side note, architectural and American history buffs will enjoy learning that Lucan’s oval room was likely the inspiration for the Oval Office in the White House (pp. 81, 87).
male salon hosts: Jacobite 2nd Duke of Ormond, in exile in France from 1715 until his death in 1745 (pp. 28–9), and Dean Patrick Delany, referred to in an endnote for chapter three (p. 195).
Elizabeth Vesey welcomed members of Ireland’s political class into her home.
For instance see Susan Schmid, British Literary Salons of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries (London, 2013); Readers, Writers, Salonnières: Female Networks in Europe, 1700–1900, ed. Hillary Brown and Gillian Dow (Oxford, 2011); Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England (London, 2006); Katharine Glover, Elite Women and Polite Society in Eighteenth Century Scotland (Woodbridge, 2011).Back to (1) On political salons, see for instance Women in British Politics, 1760–1860: the Power of the Petticoat, ed. Kathryn Gleadle and Sarah Richardson (London, 2000).Back to (3)