a famous center of the Swedish cultural elite, were especially writers gathered to make contact with wealthy benefactors, a role which was eventually taken over by the Curman Receptions of Calla Curman in the 1880s and 1890s. Spain In Iberia or Latin America, a tertulia is a social gathering with literary or artistic overtones. The word is originally Spanish and has only moderate currency in English, in describing Latin cultural contexts. Since the 20th century, a typical tertulia has moved out from the private drawing-room to become a regularly scheduled event in a public place such as a bar, although some tertulias are still held in more private spaces. Participants may share their recent creations (poetry, short stories, other writings, even artwork or songs). Switzerland In Switzerland, the salon culture was extant in the mid-18th century, represented by Julie Bondeli in Bern and Barbara Schulthess in Zürich, and the salon of Anna Maria Rüttimann-Meyer von Schauensee reached in influential role in the early 19th century. In Coppet Castle close to Lake Geneva, the exiled Parisian salonnière and author, Madame de Staël, hosted a salon which played a key role in the aftermath of the French Revolution and especially under Napoleon Bonaparte's Regime. It has become known as the Coppet group. De Staël is author of around thirty publications, from which On Germany (1813) was the most well known in its time. She has been painted by such famous painters as François Gérard and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. United Kingdom In 18th-century England, salons were held by Elizabeth Montagu, in whose salon the expression bluestocking originated, and who created the Blue Stockings Society, and by Hester Thrale. In the 19th century, the Russian Baroness Méry von Bruiningk hosted a salon in St. John's Wood, London, for refugees (mostly German) of the revolutions of 1848 (the Forty-Eighters). Clementia Taylor, an early feminist and radical held a salon at Aubrey House in Campden Hill in the 1860s. Her salon was attended by Moncure D. Conway, Louisa May Alcott, Arthur Munby, feminists Barbara Bodichon, Lydia Becker, Elizabeth Blackwell, and Elizabeth Malleson. Holland House in Kensington under the Fox family in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was akin to a French salon, largely for adherents to the Whig Party. United States Martha Washington, the first American First Lady, performed a function similar to the host or hostess of the European salon. She held weekly public