I confess it, I got a bit grumpy about this book long before I finished blogging it. And I don't think that was just because it felt like a bait-and-switch. I wanted to learn more about the social institution of women's companionate relations in general: how it played out in various situations, what the social and economic dynamics were, how it was instantiated at different class levels. I got a little of that, but a lot more of overly intricate micro-biographies of a fairly narrow slice of literary women, most of whom were connected to each other in some way. (It did leave me wanting to look up more about the Duchess of Portland, who figures tangentially in many of the biographies.) But as a historical study, it was simply not very well written. Identities were presented in a confusing way (in part because of the multiplcation of common names that weren't clearly distinguished). The details of people's movements and interactions were catalogued without being related to any central thesis. And in the end, the central thesis that did emerge was entirely different from the stated topic.
But it's done now. For next week's entry (i.e., tomorrow's) I think I'm going to insert a rather short item that came up in the footnotes so I can take a breather before I plunge into another entire book.
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