Sophie Coulombeau

Portrait of Hannah More, by Frances Reynolds, c.1780. Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives/Bridgeman Images.

‘Bluestockings’ by Susannah Gibson review

Bluestockings: The First Women’s Movement by Susannah Gibson makes a case for 18th-century proto-feminism. Do the Bluestockings fit?

Left: Illustration of Mary Hamilton from a miniature in a ring given by her to Mr John Dickenson after their engagement. Frontispiece (portrait detail) to Mary Hamilton, afterwards Mrs. John Dickenson, at Court and at Home, from Letters and Diaries 1756 to 1816, edited by her great-granddaughters Elizabeth and Florence Anson (John Murray, 1925). Right: George IV when Prince of Wales, by William Beechey, c.1798. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This Is Not a Love Story

The correspondence between Mary Hamilton and the future George IV is often seen as evidence of a harmless crush in the Georgian court. It was nothing of the sort.