Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

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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.
3: 173, 183
  • BirthName: Mary Pierrepont
  • Nicknames: Flavia
    This was not exactly a pseudonym, but the name of a part-autobiographical fictional character. Pope later employed it allusively as a nickname.
    ; Sappho
    LMWM was celebrated by various writers and admirers under this name, as were many of her female writing contemporaries.
    Pope then turned the name against her, using it as a coded allusion whose associations became steadily more and more dirty, lewd, and rapacious.

  • Married: Wortley Montagu
    She signed letters and poems as MWM. During her lifetime her work appeared before the public as by Lady Mary Wortley or The Right Honourable Lady M— W— M—. Montagu as the form of her surname was hardly ever used in England, only abroad. It was sometimes wrongly spelt with a final e.
    ; Wortley
  • Pseudonyms: Strephon; Clarinda; A Turkey Merchant
  • Styled: Lady
  • Indexed: Montagu
Photo of a full-length painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Jonathan Richardson recording her time in Turkey. She stands outdoors, with famous buildings of Constantinople (Istanbul) visible beyond. She is dressed in gold: a caftan whose deep V-neck and open skirt reveal a lace shift and long harem drawers. She also wears a gold cap which she calls a talpock on her dark hair, a blue cloak edged with ermine, pearl drop earrings, and pointed slippers. The presence of the young Black boy behind her is start

Milestones

Before 26 May 1689

Mary Pierrepont (later LMWM ) was born in London.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Clarendon, 1999.
5

1703-1705

The teenage Lady Mary Pierrepont (later LMWM ) served a poetic and literary apprenticeship, evidenced in two surviving volumes of prose and verse.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Clarendon, 1999.
16ff

3 August 1716-1 November 1718

LMWM dated the edited letters making up her manuscript travel book about Europe, Turkey, and the Mediterranean: her Embassy Letters.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
1: 248-446

May 1758-2 July 1762

LMWM wrote the letters in her last surviving important correspondence: with Sir James and Lady Frances Steuart .
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
3: 148-296

21 August 1762

LMWM died of breast cancer in Great George Street, Hanover Square, London.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
3: 296n2

7 May 1763

Making posthumous and unauthorised use of her name, Becket and De Hondt published LMWM 's Embassy Letters as Letters . . . written during her travels.
Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Clarendon, 1999.
625-6

1818

LMWM 's letters to Sir James and Lady Frances Steuart were printed as Original Letters, at Greenock in Scotland.

Biography

Birth

The date of LMWM 's birth is not known. She was the eldest in her family.

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