Blue Stockings is the first full-length play by Jessica Swale. It is set at Girton College, Cambridge in 1896. Its title refers to bluestockings, a derogatory term for female intellectuals. The action involves four very talented female undergraduates and the campaign to be allowed like their male colleagues to receive a formal degree qualification at the end of their studies. The play touches on some of the issues surrounding the feminist ideals of the late nineteenth-century New Woman including female bicycle-riding, equal education rights, sexual autonomy, and political enfranchisement.