...conversation. Boswell has a few words of indulgent description of the new movement: "About this time it was much the fashion for several ladies to have...These societies were denominated Blue-stocking Clubs" There is some dispute as to how the name blue-stocking came to be applied to these intellectual coteries,...

...appellation. What Johnson's Boswell says about the matter is as follows:— "About this time" (in 1781) "it was much the fashion for several ladies to have...and ingenious men animated by a desire to please. One of the most eminent members of these societies was a Mr. Stillingfleet (a grandson of the Bishop),...

...conversation. Boswell has a few words of indulgent description of the new movement : "About this time it was much the fashion for several ladies to have...These societies were denominated Blue-stocking Clubs." There is some dispute as to how the name blue-stocking came to be applied to these intellectual coteries,...

...protest against this intellectual stifling, as well as against 'the tyranny of cards,' it began to be much the fashion for several ladies to have evening...literary and ingenious men, animated by a desire to please1. The first ' conversation,' however, had been given in the early fifties, many years before...