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.
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.
WMCN
's early and close relationship with her sister-in-law Mary, Countess of Traquair
, née Maxwell, suffered vicissitudes over the years through her poverty and her husband's shameless requests for money. In 1718 the Traquairs...
Textual Features
Anna Williams
Besides AW
's own work, the volume included several pieces by Johnson, The Three Warnings by Hester Thrale
, and a poem beginning Friendship, peculiar gift of heaven, a copy of which had been...
Reception
Marie-Catherine de Villedieu
This was one of three publications by MCV
which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
had in her library (besides a sequel to another Villedieu work).
“List of Lady Mary Wortley’s books packed up to be sent abroad”. Wharncliffe Muniments, Sheffield, p. M / 135 / 3.
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...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susan Tweedsmuir
Through her mother ST
was descended from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
. She was happy to claim Lady Mary as an ancestress, but did not pay her particularly close attention: she was mistaken in 1952...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Flora Tristan
One chapter, entitled English Women, criticizes British social systems, and details the consequences women suffer because of the indissolubility of marriage.
Tristan, Flora. Flora Tristan’s London Journal, 1840. Translators Palmer, Dennis and Giselle Pincetl, Charles River Books.
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT
's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Parker and Bourn.
18
Later pages mix letters...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Though Theresa writes most of the letters in the book, the opening one, as often in women's epistolary novels at this date, is an exchange between men. Tomlins, however, does not attempt to capture a...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Tollet
The volume opens with translations from classical authors, and includes two psalms translated into Latin.
Londry, Michael, and Elizabeth Tollet. The Poems of Elizabeth Tollet. Oxford University.
51
ET
also translated from the sixteenth-century Latin of George Buchanan
. One poem, Ariette, was listed as set...
Family and Intimate relationships
Ann Thicknesse
Philip Thicknesse was a somewhat shady character, one of the greatest self-publicists of the eighteenth century.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
under Philip Thicknesse
After travelling the world in various capacities he had eloped with an heiress in 1742...
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...
At seventy-nine, LLS
first became a deliberately published author, with her Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M.W. Montagu (also known as Introductory Anecdotes) for her grandmother
's Letters and Works.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. “Preface”. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by W. Moy Thomas, Swan Sonnenschein, p. iii - viii.
iii
Rubenstein, Jill. “Women’s Biography as a Family Affair: Lady Louisa Stuart’s ’Biographical Anecdotes’ of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu”. Prose Studies, Vol.
9
, No. 1, pp. 3-21.
17
Birth
Lady Louisa Stuart
At her christening, on 6 September 1757, Lady Mary Coke
stood proxy for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
as godmother.
Stuart, Lady Louisa. Letters of Lady Louisa Stuart to Miss Louisa Clinton. Editor Home, Hon. James Archibald, D. Douglas.
1: 260
Family and Intimate relationships
Lady Louisa Stuart
It gave LLS
some trouble as a child that her grandmother was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
: I am sure I heartily hated her name. Whatever I wanted to learn, everybody was up in arms...
Timeline
1656: Abraham Cowley published Poems; this volume,...
Writing climate item
1656
Abraham Cowley
published Poems; this volume, which included his Pindaric Odes and Miscellanies, confirmed his stature as the leading poet of the day.
1686: Madame de Maintenon founded, in a nunnery...
Building item
1686
Madame de Maintenon
founded, in a nunnery at St Cyr near Paris, a school for impoverished noble girls. Closed with other convents at the Revolution, the institution re-opened in 1808 as a school for...
1 December 1699: John Pomfret published The Choice, a poem...
Writing climate item
1 December 1699
John Pomfret
published The Choice, a poem in praise of the good life; among many other poems sharing this title, or that of The Wish, Pomfret's became a long-lived favourite.
1 March 1711: Joseph Addison began to publish the Spec...
14 April 1713: Joseph Addison's influential classical tragedy,...
Writing climate item
14 April 1713
Joseph Addison
's influential classical tragedy, Cato, opened.
13 June 1716: After the early death of Mary Monck, her...
Women writers item
13 June 1716
After the early death of Mary Monck
, her grieving father, Robert, Viscount Molesworth
, published Marinda: Poems and Translations upon Several Occasions, which contains writing by her and others.
19 May 1720: A New Miscellany, edited by Anthony Hammond,...
November 1739: The anonymous, probably female Sophia published...
Women writers item
November 1739
The anonymous, probably female Sophia
published a pamphlet entitled Woman not Inferior to Man.
Texts
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, and Laetitia Pilkington. “Annotation”. The Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington.
Stuart, Lady Louisa, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M. W. Montagu and Supplement to the Anecdotes”. Essays and Poems and Simplicity A Comedy, edited by Robert Halsband et al., Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 6-61.
Stuart, Lady Louisa, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “Biographical Anecdotes of Lady M.W. Montagu”. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, first Baron Wharncliffe and James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, first Baron Wharncliffe, R. Bentley, 1837, pp. 1: 1 - 105.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Court Poems. Edmund Curll, 1716.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy. Editors Halsband, Robert and Isobel Grundy, Oxford University Press, 1993.
Murphy, Dervla et al. “Introduction”. Embassy to Constantinople, Century, 1988, pp. 7-37.
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.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M— W—y M—e. T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1763.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M— W—y M—e. A. Homer and P. Milton, 1764.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M— W—y M—e. T. Becket and P. A. De Hondt, 1767.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Original Letters from the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montague, to Sir James & Lady Frances Steuart; also Memoirs and Anecdotes of those distinguished persons. Printed by Robert Donaldson, 1818.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. “Preface”. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by W. Moy Thomas, Swan Sonnenschein, 1893, p. iii - viii.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Romance Writings. Editor Grundy, Isobel, Clarendon Press, 1996.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Six Town Eclogues. Printed for M. Cooper, 1747.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press, 1967.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Dean’s Provocation for Writing the Lady’s Dressing-Room. A Poem. Printed for T. Cooper, 1734.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor James Archibald Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie, first Baron Wharncliffe, Richard Bentley, 1836.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Thomas, W. Moy, Henry G. Bohn, 1861.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Thomas, W. Moy, Cambridge University Press, 2010, http://www.cambridge.org/series/sSeries.asp?code=CLOR.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Nonsense of Common-Sense. James Roberts (a pamphlet-seller rather than a publisher).
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Nonsense of Common-Sense, 1737-1738. Editor Halsband, Robert, Northwestern University Press, 1947.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Poetical Works of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e. Editor Reed, Isaac, Printed for J. Williams, 1768.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Verse of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. A Critical Edition. Editor Grundy, Isobel, Oxford University, 1971.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Works of the Right Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Dallaway, James, Richard Phillips, 1803.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, and John, Baron Hervey. Verses Address’d to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace. James Roberts.