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.
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. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
3: 88
Publishing
Sarah Fielding
She described herself as the Author of David Simple on the title-page of this and of all her subsequent fictional works. She did not put her name on a title-page until her last book. This...
Publishing
Sarah Fielding
The work was dedicated to Lady Pomfret
. Its 440 subscribers included many prominent people, reflecting the bluestockings' range of influence as well as SF
's local and family connections: Ralph Allen
, Lord Chesterfield
Textual Features
Charlotte Forman
With probably pleasurable irony and in the tradition of Mary Astell
and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, this essay presents its author as a great admirer of the literary productions of the fair sex, which...
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.
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
The final, 6-volume edition of Robert Dodsley
's Collection of Poems by Several Hands appeared, including a poem by FSCH
which was falsely ascribed to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, according to the latter.
Grundy, Isobel. “The Politics of Female Authorship: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Reaction to the Printing of Her Poems”. The Book Collector, Vol.
1
, pp. 19-37.
35-6
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...
Textual Production
Frances Seymour, Countess of Hertford
The circumstances of misattribution are mysterious, but literary historian Michael F. Suarez
guesses that Dodsley and William Shenstone
deliberately printed this poem as Montagu
's in order to preserve the reputation of the real author...
Textual Production
Anne Francis
AF
explains in her preliminary discourse (dated 24 July 1781) that she began by making a prose translation. Then she endeavour[ed] to soften, with the flow of numbers, the rugged, inharmonious style of literal translation...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
This work of pedagogy takes the form of an epistolary novel: a picture of contemporary culture, since its range of reference to other texts is wide. It assumes, like Rousseau
's Nouvelle Héloïse, the...
Travel
George Gordon, sixth Baron Byron
He travelled through Switzerland to Italy, where he lived for years in Venice and in Genoa, besides shorter periods in other towns. In Venice he believed that the palazzo he lived in had been...
Occupation
George Gordon, sixth Baron Byron
In Venice he discovered surviving letters from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
to Francesco Algarotti
, and wrote to his publisher, John Murray
, about getting them into print. Murray, however, did not respond.
Winch, Alison. “Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Byronic Hero”. Pride and Prejudices: Women’s Writing of the Long Eighteenth Century.
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire
The feelings of this Emma are all in extremes. During her early passion she quotes Frances Greville
on the pains of sensibility.
Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire,. Emma. T. Hookham.
1: 66
She and her father kneel alternately to each other when she...
