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.
The Monthly Review thought that this novel, though stiff and formal, was promising; that it was influenced by Marivaux
' Marianne;and that it was written by a man.
Griffiths, Ralph, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
3 (May 1750): 59-61
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
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.
vii, 89, 224, 226
The Grand Cyrus (often called by its...
Intertextuality and Influence
Madeleine de Scudéry
Aphra Behn
took from the Carte de tendre some of the topographical imagery of her verse-and-prose romance A Voyage to the Island of Love (which in turn was the model behind The Adventurer, written...
Intertextuality and Influence
Marie de Sévigné
These letters have been immensely popular since their first publication, in France, England, and elsewhere. Numerous male critics have written of their almost personal love for MS
. One of those impervious to her charm...
Textual Features
Anna Seward
The series (completed in 1791) developed from AS
's strictures on John Weston
's contributions to a book entitled Records of the Woodmen of Arden. She compared Dryden
with Pope
to the advantage of...
Textual Features
Anna Seward
The sonnets are written in strict Milton
ic form. One of their favourite themes is love of nature and the countryside; one or two deal with Seward's love for Honora Sneyd
. In rendering Horace...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anna Seward
AS
's correspondence often deals with literary matters as well as with social matters and personalities. She writes with astonishing freedom to Hester Piozzi
about the latter's travel book Observations and Reflections: not only...
Textual Features
Catherine Sinclair
In Lady Mary Pierrepoint the title character is a Protestant whose virago widowed mother-in-law (Lady Pierrepont) intends to disinherit her son Sir Cosmo (Mary's husband) and leave her lands to the Roman Catholic Church
...
Literary responses
Susan Smythies
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
Intertextuality and Influence
Mariana Starke
The play's central theme was suttee or sati, the practice of burning a widow at her husband's death. The playbill advertised a Procession representing the Ceremonies attending the Sacrifice of an Indian Woman on the...
Textual Production
Lady Louisa Stuart
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lady Louisa Stuart
Despite family discouragement of her literary interests, with reference to the awful example of her grandmother (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
), LLS
, at the age of nine, had plans for writing full-length works...
