About the Project

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Project Aims

Our goal is to prepare a fully annotated electronic edition of Elizabeth Robinson Montagu’s correspondence. The author and bluestocking salonnière (1718-1800) was the leading woman of letters and artistic patron of her day. Montagu corresponded extensively with leaders of British Enlightenment coteries, such as Edmund Burke, Gilbert West, David Garrick and Horace Walpole, as well as the Bluestocking inner circle – Elizabeth Carter, Sarah Scott, Hannah More, Hester Thrale Piozzi, Frances Burney, Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Elizabeth Vesey, and Frances Boscawen. The c.8,000 extant letters, ‘among the most important surviving collections from the eighteenth century’ (Schnorrenberg) are held in the British Library, the Bodleian, Aberdeen, Manchester and other archives including the Huntington Library, California, which holds 6,923 of them. Less than a quarter of these documents has been previously published and then in partial archaic print selections.

EMCO Charity Info

Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online (EMCO) – Registered Charity no. 1174697

Elizabeth Montagu Correspondence Online (EMCO) is a charitable incorporated organization set up in 2017. The trustees are Joanna Barker, Elizabeth Eger, Caroline Franklin, Michael Franklin and Nicole Pohl.

The objects of EMCO

To advance education for the public benefit by publishing an online edition of the letters of Elizabeth Montagu, her correspondents and other members of her circle (“the Montagu Correspondence”) in particular but not exclusively as a means to:

* advance scholarship and literary and historical research by making the online correspondence archive available for use as an educational tool by academic institutions and interested members of the public;

* encourage scholars and researchers to transcribe, edit, study and publish materials arising from the online correspondence archive, and to provide them with scholarships, expense reimbursement and other forms of financial assistance for this purpose.

Please note that all dates and location information are provisional, initially taken from the library and archive catalogues. As our section editors continue to work through the material we will update our database and the changes will be reflected across the edition.

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