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. 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.
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
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...
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...
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
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Sarah Scott
Lady Barbara was a daughter of the rake and gambler George Montagu, Earl of Halifax (and therefore a cousin of SS 's brother-in-law Edward Montagu and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu 's husband). On Halifax's...
Literary responses Sarah Scott
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
Literary responses Anna Maria van Schurman
This work became fairly well-known among Englishwomen interested in the issue of education for their sex. Her correspondence with Bathsua Makin ensured that the influence of AMS in England was practical as well as theoretical....
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
MAS adds a new aesthetic category, the contemplative sublime, alongside the Burke an or terrible sublime and other categories related to the Burkean beautiful. She derives her thinking from women as well as men. In...
Intertextuality and Influence Sappho
Sappho 's name was an honorific for women writers for generations. George Puttenham may have been the first to use it to compliment a writing woman: in Parthienades, 1579, he said that Queen Elizabeth

Timeline

18 March 1748: Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his...

Writing climate item

18 March 1748

Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands.

1750: The progressive Pope Benedict XIV appointed...

Building item

1750

The progressive Pope Benedict XIV appointed a woman, Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-99), as professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna .

1752: A severe epidemic of smallpox resulted in...

Building item

1752

A severe epidemic of smallpox resulted in 3,500 deaths in London, more than seventeen per cent of all recorded deaths this year.
Shuttleton, David. Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660—1820. Cambridge University Press.
106

1754: The Royal College of Physicians made public...

Building item

1754

The Royal College of Physicians made public their official approval of inoculation for smallpox, as introduced to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu thirty-three years before.

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.

15 January 1759: The British Museum (including what had formerly...

Building item

15 January 1759

The British Museum (including what had formerly been known as the King's Library ), established six years earlier, was first opened to the public.

13 September 1759: A British party under James Wolfe climbed...

National or international item

13 September 1759

A British party under James Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and beat the French in battle there.

12 February 1767-5 June 1769: Hugh Kelly issued his periodical The Babler,...

Writing climate item

12 February 1767-5 June 1769

Hugh Kelly issued his periodicalThe Babler, opening with the usual bow towards the Tatler and Spectator.

April 1768: The first volume of The New Foundling Hospital...

Writing climate item

April 1768

The first volume of The New Foundling Hospital for Wit was published: an influential poetry anthology linked to the political opposition.

January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...

Writing climate item

January 1781-December 1782

The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...

14 May 1796: After some years of investigating the protection...

Building item

14 May 1796

After some years of investigating the protection given by cowpox against smallpox, Edward Jenner carried out his first, experimental cowpox injection of a healthy young boy. His subject showed no reaction when later inoculated with...

July 1796: The explorer Mungo Park, abandoned and anxious...

Building item

July 1796

The explorer Mungo Park , abandoned and anxious on the banks of the Niger River in what is now Mali, was taken in, housed and fed by African village women, who composed and sang...

May 1829: A Ladies' Bazaar to benefit Spanish refugees,...

Building item

May 1829

A Ladies' Bazaar to benefit Spanish refugees, held at the Hanover Square Rooms in London, patron the Duke of Wellington , raised the remarkable sum of £2,000.

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

1861

A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...

1879: Walter Bagehot's Literary Studies, a two-volume...

Writing climate item

1879

Walter Bagehot 's Literary Studies, a two-volume collection of his literary essays, was published posthumously with a memoir by Richard Holt Hutton .

Texts

No bibliographical results available.