Elizabeth Montagu's Study of Cicero's Life: The Formation of an Eighteenth-Century Woman's Rhetorical Identity

Popular eighteenth-century British biographies of Cicero had a significant impact on the rhetorical identity formation of Elizabeth Montagu (1720–1800). As the acknowledged founder of the “Bluestocking” salon, Elizabeth Montagu played a key role in forming the conversational and epistolary eloquence of her broad and influential network of men and women. A careful analysis of the young Elizabeth's epistolary discussion of biographies of Cicero and Atticus, especially Conyers Middleton'sLife of Cicero, provides insight into Montagu's mature rhetorical practice as well as neo-Ciceronian influences on men's and women's rhetorical identity formation in eighteenth-century Britain.