Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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Standard Name: Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley
Birth Name: Mary Pierrepont
Styled: Lady Mary Pierrepont
Nickname: Flavia
Nickname: Sappho
Married Name: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Indexed Name: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Pseudonym: Strephon
Pseudonym: Clarinda
Pseudonym: A Turkey Merchant
LMWM
, eighteenth-century woman of letters, identified herself as a writer, a sister of the quill
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
3: 173
haunted by the daemon of poetry. She wrote poems, essays, letters (including the letters from Europe and Turkey which she later recast as a highly successful travel book), fiction (including adult fairy-tale, oriental tale, and full-length mock romance), satire, a diary, a play, a political periodical, and a history of her own times. Not all of these survive. Best known in her lifetime for her poetry, she is today still best known for her letters.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
The Monthly Review was not impressed: it thought the book hastily written, thin, and uninteresting.
Griffiths, Ralph, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
9 (1753): 394
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, on the other hand, appreciated the Grotesque Figures that amuse,
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
3: 89
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
JCM
reaped a good deal of praise during her lifetime, but most of it must have been of questionable value to her as a poet. Pope
's To Erinna is typical in casting her as...
Literary responses
Marie-Catherine de Villedieu
In her copy of this text (an edition published in 1721 in twelve volumes),Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
wrote: plus delicat que Crebillon
[evidently the younger of this name, famous for erotic fiction], plus amusant...
Literary responses
Delarivier Manley
A series of various keys attached to later editions fed curiosity about the originals of DM
's portraits, without actually giving very much away.
Manley, Delarivier. “Introduction”. New Atalantis, edited by Ros Ballaster, Pickering and Chatto, p. v - xxviii.
xv
Her work can claim some credit for the collapse of...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
In a later generation Anna Letitia Barbauld
followed Hertford and Carter in celebrating ESR
her in poetry. Such different figures as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Clara Reeve
endorsed her. She had a huge following...
Literary responses
Delarivier Manley
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
commented on the flyleaf of her copy: true & well wrote.
Literary responses
Eliza Haywood
This book's full title, with its reference to a Search after Happiness, sounds like a possible source for Sarah Fielding
's David Simple, whose hero is depicted in Search of a Real Friend...
Literary responses
Lady Caroline Lamb
When Glenarvon first appeared, said Lady Caroline, William Lamb
admired it so much that it was instrumental in bringing the separated couple back together.
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan,. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press.
2: 202
Joanna Baillie
discerned its author's ability, but added, Her...
Literary responses
Eliza Haywood
In the Monthly Review, Ralph Griffiths
passed a judgement which was inflected against Betsy Thoughtless by issues of gender. He guessed that the author was female because of the novel's attention to matters of...
Literary responses
Anna Maria van Schurman
This work became fairly well-known among Englishwomen interested in the issue of education for their sex. Her correspondence with Bathsua Makin
ensured that the influence of AMS
in England was practical as well as theoretical....
Leisure and Society
Joanna Baillie
In the earlier 1840s, however, she was still a keen reader. She tackled the first edition of Frances Burney
's Diary and Letters out of a desire to get some insight into the literary society...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emma Parker
EP
says she has studied to avoid a dictatorial tone . . . considering herself rather as one of those [women] she is addressing.
Parker, Emma. Important Trifles. T. Egerton.
prelims
Feminist Companion Archive.
She writes as a strong-minded Christian, and makes use of...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anne Burke
A quotation from Shakespeare
's The Tempest intruces an opening scene of storm and shipwreck on a lonely western coast. The only survivor, a six-month-old baby girl in a cradle, is rescued with a gold...
Intertextuality and Influence
Edith Templeton
The epigraph alerts the reader to expect an unusually disillusioned example of the voyage-to-the-island-of-love genre (previously written by Aphra Behn
and the future Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
). This novel begins, as did the two...
Intertextuality and Influence
Madeleine de Scudéry
As a consequence of this work's success, MS
became popularly known as Sappho or the modern Sappho, particularly in connection with her salon.
McDougall, Dorothy. Madeleine de Scudéry. Benjamin Blom.
