Enfilade

From Boydell & Brewer:

Markman Ellis and Jack Orchard, eds., Bluestockings and Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Prospect of Improvement (London: Boydell Press, 2025), 292 pages, ISBN: 978-1837650507, £85. Available as an ebook for £19. Studies in the Eighteenth Century series, Volume 16.

Situated within the broader context of eighteenth-century intellectual and cultural history, this collection redefines the role of the Bluestocking circle in shaping Britain’s landscapes and social ideals. Against the backdrop of Whiggish notions of ‘improvement’—encompassing agricultural innovation, aesthetic refinement, and moral progress—it explores how women such as Elizabeth Montagu, Mary Delany, and Elizabeth Carter navigated the intersections of polite sociability, intellectual production, and estate management. Their contributions reveal a dynamic interplay between cultural critique and practical reform, positioning them as active participants in the period’s debates on land, labour, and national identity.

Drawing on insights from the Elizabeth Montagu’s Correspondence Online (EMCO) project, these essays uncover the creative and social tensions embedded in iconic estates such as Montagu’s Sandleford and Lord Lyttelton’s Hagley Hall. They delve into the poetic and philosophical musings of James Woodhouse, the sociable artistry of Mary Delany, and the symbolic landscapes of Wrest Park. By examining correspondence, poetry, visual arts, and cartography, this volume offers an unprecedented exploration of the ways Bluestocking women engaged with and redefined the designed landscape as a site of intellectual and environmental innovation. This interdisciplinary collection reshapes the historiography of gender, environment, and cultural progress, offering fresh insights into the enduring significance of eighteenth-century landscapes and the intellectual communities that shaped them.

Markman Ellis is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at Queen Mary University of London.
Jack Orchard is Content Editor of the Electronic Enlightenment project based at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford.

c o n t e n t s

List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Foreword: ‘Bringing Elizabeth Montagu to the World’ — Joanna Barker and Nicole Pohl
Introduction: ‘The Prospect of Improvement: Bluestockings and Landscape in Eighteenth-Century Britain’ — Markman Ellis and Jack Orchard

Section One
1  Idioms of Improvement: Gender and Social Relations on the Montagu Estates, 1730–1800 — Steve Hindle
2  Religious Faith, Class Politics, and Equitable Progress: James Woodhouse and Elizabeth Montagu’s Contending Visions of Improvement — Adam Bridgen and Steve Van Hagen
3  Cultivating Wilderness — Ve-Yin Tee

Section Two
4  ‘Another Little Excursion’: On Tour with Mrs Montagu and Lord Lyttelton — Michael Cousins
5  Cultivating Land, Literature, Letters: Textualities of Improvement in Elizabeth Montagu’s Travels in Scotland — Millie Schurch
6  ‘She had no eyes nor understanding to see that it was not a common vulgar garden’: Mary Delany’s Landscapes of Improvement — Kristina Decker
7  Ladies of Landscape: The Discovery of Lady Harriett Garnier’s ferme ornée at Rookesbury, Hampshire — Rosemary Baird Andreae

Section Three
8  ‘The Genius of Rest … those Happy Groves Inspired’: Literary Composition, Coterie Sociability, and the Gardens at Wrest Park — Jemima Hubberstey
9  ‘Fate Led Me from my Lov’d Retreat’: The City and the Country in Elizabeth Harcourt’s Writings — Mary Chadwick
10  ‘Death’s Refreshing Shade’: Elizabeth Carter, ‘Church-yard Poetry’ and Contemplative Retirement in the Gardens of the Dead — James Metcalf

Afterword: Bluestocking Landscapes — Stephen Bending

Bibliography

The four central musicians are not from the eighteenth century, but the instruments are! From Simon & Schuster:

Kate Kennedy, Cello: A Journey through Silence to Sound (New York: Pegasus Books, 2024), 480 pages, ISBN: ‎978-1639367504, $35.

A cello has no language, yet it possesses a vocabulary wide enough to tell, bear witness, and make connections across time and continents—a feat brought to life in this brilliant new book.

In this luminous narrative, Kate Kennedy, a writer and cellist herself, weaves together the story of four cellists who suffered various forms of persecution, injury, and misfortune. The stories are those of the forgotten Jewish cellist Pál Hermann, who is likely to have been murdered by the Nazis in Lithuania during the Holocaust; Lise Cristiani, another forgotten performer, who is considered to be the first female professional cello soloist and who embarked on an epic concert tour of Siberia in the 1850s taking with her a Stradivarius cello that can be seen to this day in a museum in Cremona in northern Italy; Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, who played in the orchestra at Auschwitz and survived spells in both that camp and in Bergen-Belsen; and Amedeo Baldovino of the Trieste piano trio, whose ‘Mara’ Stradivarius was lost in a shipwreck in the River Plate between Buenos Aires and Uruguay but later recovered from the water and repaired.

Kate Kennedy is one of the foremost critics of twentieth-century music of her generation and is frequently heard on Radio 3. She is an Associate of the English Faculty at Oxford, where she lectures on twentieth-century literature and biography. She is the author of Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney. She is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, co-director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, and director of the Centre for the Study of Women Composers.

From Macmillan:

Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding: A Novel (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2025), 240 pages, ISBN: 978-1250366382, $27

The Crucible meets The Virgin Suicides in this haunting debut about five sisters in a small village in eighteenth-century England whose neighbors are convinced they’re turning into dogs.

Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on the riverbank to portentous ravens gathering on the roofs of people about to die. But when the villagers start to hear barking, and one claims to see the Mansfield sisters transform before his very eyes, the allegations spark fascination and fear like nothing has before.

The truth is that though the inhabitants of Little Nettlebed have never much liked the Mansfield girls—a little odd, think some; a little high on themselves, perhaps—they’ve always had plenty to say about them. As the rotating perspectives of five villagers quickly make clear, now is no exception. Even if local belief in witchcraft is waning, an aversion to difference is as widespread as ever, and these conflicting narratives all point to the same ultimate conclusion: Something isn’t right in Little Nettlebed, and the sisters will be the ones to pay for it. A richly atmospheric parable of the pleasures and perils of female defiance, The Hounding considers whether in any age it might be safer to be a dog than an unusual young girl.

Xenobe Purvis was born in Tokyo in 1990. She studied English Literature at the University of Oxford, has an MA in creative writing from Royal Holloway, and was part of the London Library’s Emerging Writers Programme. She is a writer and literary researcher, with essays published in the Times Literary Supplement, The London Magazine, and elsewhere.

From Simon & Schuster:

Laura Shepherd-Robinson, The Art of a Lie: A Novel (New York: Atria Books, 2025), 304 pages, ISBN: 978-1668083093, $28.

In 18th-century England, a widowed confectioner is drawn into a web of love, betrayal, and intrigue and a battle of wits in this masterful historical novel from the author of the “delicious puzzle-box of a novel” (The New York Times) and USA Today bestseller The Square of Sevens.

Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her confectionary shop on Piccadilly is barely turning a profit, her suppliers conspiring to put her out of business because they don’t like women in trade. Henry Fielding, the famous author-turned-magistrate, is threatening to confiscate the money in her husband’s bank account because he believes it might have been illicitly acquired. And even those who claim to be Hannah’s friends have darker intent. Only William Devereux seems different. A friend of her late husband, Devereux helps Hannah unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his death. He also tells her about an Italian delicacy called iced cream, an innovation she is convinced will transform the fortunes of her shop. But their friendship opens Hannah to speculation and gossip and draws Henry Fielding’s attention her way, locking her into a battle of wits more devastating than anything she can imagine.

Laura Shepherd-Robinson was born in Bristol in 1976. She has a BSc in politics from the University of Bristol, an MSc in political theory from the London School of Economics, and an MA in creative writing from City St. George’s, University of London. She is the author of three other novels, Blood & Sugar, Daughters of Night, and The Square of Sevens. She lives in London with her husband, Adrian.