"This memoir tell the story of a woman who at age eighteen played an important role in the coup that brought Catherine the Great to the throne. The relationship between these two women, often tense, is a central theme throughout this story. Dashkova, occupying the highly unusual position of both stateswoman and mother, also reveals her own path between the demands and limitations of the private and public spheres of her society. She provides a view of the expectations of Russian aristocratic women, the possibilities available to them, and the ways in which gender roles were conceived in the eighteenth century."--[book cover].

The conversation parties of the bluestockings, held to debate contemporary ideas in eighteenth-century Britain, were vital in encouraging female artistic achievement. The bluestockings promoted links between learning and virtue in the public imagination, inventing a new kind of informal sociability that combined the life of the senses with that of the mind. This collection of essays, by leading scholars in the fields of literature, history and art history, provides an interdisciplinary treatment of bluestocking culture in eighteenth-century Britain. It is the first academic volume to concentrate on the rich visual and material culture that surrounded and supported the bluestocking project, from formal portraits and sculptures to commercially reproduced prints. By the early twentieth century, the term 'bluestocking' came to signify a dull and dowdy intellectual woman, but the original bluestockings inhabited a world in which brilliance was valued at every level and women were encouraged to shine and even dazzle.

In 1782, Princess Ekaterina Dashkova was appointed dir. of Russia's Imperial Acad. of Arts & Sci. by Catherine the Great. It was just two years after she had met with another personality of the Enlightenment -- Benjamin Franklin, founding pres. of Amer. first scientific acad., the Amer. Philosophical Soc. (APS). The essays in this vol., pub. as a companion to an exhib. of the same title & on the occasion of the Franklin Tercentenary of 2006, highlight Dashkova as an accomplished Enlightenment woman. They explore how she, like Franklin, took up the challenge of living according to the newest ideals of her age. Nominated by Franklin in 1789 to become the first female member of the APS, she in turn made him the first Amer. member of the Russian Acad.