Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
-
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, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
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, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
AD
writes with insight about Montagu
. Like a novelist, she sets out to make sense of discordant elements in the writer's character (the natural inclination to intrigue,
Desai, Anita, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “Introduction”. Turkish Embassy Letters, edited by Malcolm Jack and Malcolm Jack, University of Georgia Press, 1993, p. vii - xxxvii.
xi
the class prejudices, and wild...
Textual Production
Anita Desai
At Cambridge in 1991, AD
composed an introduction for an edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
's Turkish Embassy Letters, which appeared from Pickering and Chatto
in 1993 and from Virago Press
in 1994.
Deverell, Mary. Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. Printed for the author by J. Rivington, Jun., 1781, 2 vols.
1: 79-80
She gives one epistle a kind of doggerel title: Advice to a Rev'rend Cleric, Near his grand climacteric, That...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Drabble
The heroine of this novel is unhappy in her marriage (two small children) to an ebullient and overbearing young actor. She is stuck with his theatre company in its seven-month season in Hereford (the birthplace...
Occupation
John Dryden
By this time Dryden's two careers as writer and dramatist were well launched. The first depended on his ability to please the Stuart court, and the second on his ability to please a theatre audience...
Textual Features
Dorothea Du Bois
After seven pages on grammar, she offers pattern letters: those in verse are in effect an anthology of epistolary poems by women, a patriotically generous selection of Irish writers (Mary Monck
, Mary Barber
Education
Helen Dunmore
While HD
was growing up she read a lot of Russian fiction and poetry.
qtd. in
McCrum, Robert. “The Siege is a novel for now”. The Observer, 10 June 2001.
McCrum, Robert. “The Siege is a novel for now”. The Observer, 10 June 2001.
The books that she read, she says, made me, as a person...
Reception
Queen Elizabeth I
The immense and long-lasting interest aroused by Elizabeth is not, of course, primarily due to her writings, any more than were the adulation paid her during her lifetime, the cult of Gloriana, the Virgin Queen...
For this anthology EF
gathered mostly improving pedagogical material, drawing on revered literary names like Shakespeare
and Milton
, as well as more recent and controversial writers like Thomas Chatterton
and Helen Maria Williams
...
Birth
Henry Fielding
He was the elder brother of Sarah Fielding
, and second cousin of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
(their grandfathers were brothers).
death
Henry Fielding
His cousin Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
wrote that HF
and Sir Richard Steele
were both so form'd for Happiness, it is a pity they were not Immortal.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
3: 88
Publishing
Sarah Fielding
She described herself as the Author of David Simple on the title-page of this and of all her subsequent fictional works. She did not put her name on a title-page until her last book. This...
Publishing
Sarah Fielding
The work was dedicated to Lady Pomfret
. Its 440 subscribers included many prominent people, reflecting the bluestockings' range of influence as well as SF
's local and family connections: Ralph Allen
, Lord Chesterfield
Textual Features
Charlotte Forman
With probably pleasurable irony and in the tradition of Mary Astell
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, this essay presents its author as a great admirer of the literary productions of the fair sex, which...