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. Halsband, RobertEditor , Clarendon Press, 1967.
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. Halsband, RobertEditor , Clarendon Press, 1967.
3: 173, 183
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

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Martha Fowke
Five poems by MF (as Mrs. Fowke) appeared in good poetic company (with Pope , Prior , Susanna Centlivre , Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , and others) in Anthony Hammond 's A New Miscellany, published on 19 May 1720.
Birth Henry Fielding
He was the elder brother of Sarah Fielding , and second cousin of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (their grandfathers were brothers).
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. Home, Hon. James ArchibaldEditor , D. Douglas, 1903.
1: 260
death William Congreve
His hitherto discreet partner the young Duchess of Marlboroughmade herself conspicuous by her public mourning.
Harris, Frances. A Passion for Government: The life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough. Clarendon, 1991.
276
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote a poem to the memory of Congreve, who, she says, In pain could...
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. Halsband, RobertEditor , Clarendon Press, 1967.
3: 88
Dedications Emily Frederick Clark
EFC published by subscription a volume of Poems: Consisting Principally of Ballads, dedicated to Lady Lonsdale (eldest grand-daughter of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu ).
OCLC WorldCat.
Clark, Emily Frederick. Poems: Consisting Principally of Ballads. F. C. and J. Rivington, 1810.
prelims
Dedications L. E. L.
It was dedicated to Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley , descendant of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu . A modern reprint appeared in 1992.
Education Helen Dunmore
While HD was growing up she read a lot of Russian fiction and poetry.
McCrum, Robert. “The Siege is a novel for now”. The Observer.
The poems of Osip Mandelstam were her talismans.
McCrum, Robert. “The Siege is a novel for now”. The Observer.
The books that she read, she says, made me, as a person...
Education George Gordon, sixth Baron Byron
Byron's voracious reading in childhood was probably fostered by an unhappy emotional life from which imaginative escape was welcome. His favourite books were then the Arabian Nights and travel books about the East, especially that...
Education Jane Gardam
She was twelve when she overheard her English teacher telling her parents that she was clever, well ahead of the standard for her age. By this time she was attending Saltburn High School for Girls...
Education Elizabeth Grant
EG refers to a number of texts that influenced her as a child. She learned to read by the age of three, taught by loving aunts, and remembered in particular Puss in Boots, Bluebeard...
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Eleanor Bowes, Countess of Strathmore
Her mother, born Mary Gilbert , from a gentry family in Hertfordshire, was her father's second wife, married more than twenty years after the death of his first. (That first wife, the beautiful, scholarly, fourteen-year-old...
Family and Intimate relationships Amelia Opie
AO accepted a proposal of marriage from a nobleman, Lord Herbert Stuart ; but she later broke off the engagement.
Stuart, the second son of the fourth Earl (later the first Marquess) of Bute, was...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
Lord Hertford (whose titles after his mother's death included Baron de Percy) was then a well-known rake whose lifestyle included daily drinking bouts with cronies until late at night. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu depicted...

Timeline

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 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 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 Spectator.
14 April 1713
Joseph Addison 's influential classical tragedy, Cato, opened.
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 , included work by Pope , Prior , William Bond , George Sewell , Susanna Centlivre , Delarivier Manley , Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .
30 June 1724
The House of Lords began hearing William Yonge 's case for divorcing his wife.
February 1726
Richard Savage published his Miscellaneous Poems and Translations: dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , it included work by Eliza Haywood , Martha Fowke , and Miranda Hill .
27 June 1726
The leading colliery owners on Tyneside set up a new cartel, the Combination or Grand Alliance, to replace an one dissolved in 1715.
16 February 1728
Henry Fielding 's first play, Love in Several Masques, opened on stage.
25 June 1731
George Lillo 's bourgeois tragedyThe London Merchant; or, The True History of George Barnwell had its debut at Drury Lane , London.
Valentine's Day 1732
Henry Fielding 's The Modern Husband opened; it was published the same month.
12 March 1733
George Lyttelton published a poem entitled Advice to a Lady.
November 1739
The anonymous, probably female Sophia published a pamphlet entitled Woman not Inferior to Man.