ABSTRACT

This article examines elite women’s agency and participation in the literary life of the country house, focusing on the circle that centred on Jemima Marchioness Grey and her husband, Philip Yorke, at Wrest Park in Bedfordshire. The “Society at Wrest” was an exclusive group of close friends and family that included Grey’s childhood friends, Mary Gregory (née Grey) and Catherine Talbot, as well as her sisters-in-law, Elizabeth Anson and Margaret Heathcote (née Yorke). Most members of the Wrest Circle were careful about publishing their works, yet they found a cerebral escape in the shades of “Vacuna” – the name they affectionately gave to Wrest – as they created private literary compositions. Although Grey did not contribute to her friends’ literary compositions, she did, as hostess, play an invaluable role in providing a space at Wrest Park that facilitated and nurtured their intellectual and artistic endeavours. Disrupting the scholarly emphasis on public-facing female intellectuals, this article argues that for some elite women, the value of belonging to a coterie was not about attracting literary fame but rather having access to a permissive environment in which they could embark on private literary pursuits and belong to an exclusive and supportive intellectual network.

摘要

本文探讨了精英女性在乡间别墅文学生活中的代理和参与，重点关注以贝德福德郡雷斯特公园的杰米玛·格雷侯爵夫人和她的丈夫菲利普·约克为中心的圈子。“雷斯特协会”是一个由亲密朋友和家人组成的专属团体，其中包括格雷儿时的朋友玛丽·格雷戈里（娘家姓格雷）和凯瑟琳·塔尔伯特，以及她的嫂子伊丽莎白·安森和玛格丽特·希思科特（娘家姓约克） 。雷斯特圈的大多数成员在出版自己的作品时都很谨慎，但他们在创作私人文学作品时，在“真空”（他们亲切地给雷斯特起的名字）的阴影下找到了一种心灵的逃避。尽管格雷没有为她朋友的文学作品做出贡献，但作为女主人，她确实 在为莱斯特公园提供一个促进和培养他们的智力和艺术努力的空间方面发挥了宝贵的作用。本文打破了学术界对面向公众的女性知识分子的重视，认为对于一些精英女性来说，属于小圈子的价值不是为了吸引文学名声，而是获得一个允许她们从事私人文学追求的环境。并属于一个专有的、支持性的知识网络。