An Essay on Conversation.

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Benjamin Stillingfleet (1702–1771) was a botanist, translator and author. He is said to be the first Blue Stocking, a phrase from which is derived the term bluestocking now used to describe a learned woman.

Stillingfleet was educated at Norwich School before obtaining a B.A. at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1723. He failed to become a Fellow, partially because of the influence of Richard Bentley, Master of the college, who considered it a shame for a man of Stillingfleet’s range of talents to ‘be buried within the walls of a college’. Stillingfleet would later include allusions to Bentley in his ‘Essay on Conversation’;

And tho’, when roughly us’d, he’s full of Choler, As blustering B—y to a Brother Scholar (p. 14)

He served as a tutor to bring in income and was the tutor to his relative William Windham at Felbrigg Hall for fourteen years. He then set out to accompany William Windham on the Grand Tour returning several years later in 1742.

His Essay on Conversation was published in 1737, just before he took his young charge on the Grand Tour; included is advice on such aspects of a cultivated life as taste, politeness, and the proper use of language. Originally published unsigned Stillingfleet’s name would appear on the title-page of a second edition printed in 1738.

A society was founded in the early 1750s by Elizabeth Montagu, Elizabeth Vesey and others as a literary discussion group primarily for women. The society was noted for wanting conversation and did not encourage card playing. They invited various people to attend including Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Catharine Macaulay, Elizabeth Griffith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Ann Linley, Charlotte Lennox and Stillingfleet. There is no doubt that his Essay on Conversation would have served as an entre to the group. One story tells that Stillingfleet was not rich enough to have the proper formal dress, which included black silk stockings, so he attended in everyday blue worsted stockings. James Boswell records that during a period of poor conversation when Stillingfleet was absent that it was remarked that they were “nowhere without blue stockings”. The term came to refer to the informal quality of the gatherings and the emphasis on conversation over fashion. The word bluestocking today is used to mean any learned woman.