Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
ER
published her first short story, A Lucky Sixpence, anonymously in the New Review in January 1894. Other stories and articles followed, notably A Modern Woman Born 1689, a review-essay on the letters...
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
Mary Davys
MD
's Accomplish'd Rake was reprinted by Francis Noble
, circulating-library owner, a specialist in popular fiction and in reprints.
Other names appeared in the imprint along with Noble's. This time exactly the copyright period...
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
politics
Mary Delany
Their object was to embarrass Sir Robert Walpole
's government, which had closed the visitors' gallery for a crucial debate over going to war with Spain. They besieged the gallery until admitted, then barracked the...
Other Life Event
Grisell Murray
This scandal was at once reported in the newspapers, with salacious jokes and verses.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
2: 14n1
During the highly publicised court trials, Grisell claimed that Arthur had burst into her room with a pistol and...
Occupation
Catherine Hutton
As well as collecting illustrations of costume, CH
was an early collector of autographs. (She began both these collections at a young age, but presumably had to start again from scratch after her losses in...
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.
Occupation
John Dryden
By this time Dryden's two careers as writer and dramatist were well launched. The first depended on his ability to please the Stuart court, and the second on his ability to please a theatre audience...
Occupation
Edmund Curll
Commentators seem unanimously to have believed Pope
's pamphlet claim that he dosed Curll with an emetic to punish him for illicitly publishing Court Poems on 26 March 1716—though since Pope also claimed to have...
Occupation
Charlotte Lennox
The fourteen-year-old Charlotte Ramsay apparently became Lady Isabella
's paid companion. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
later felt that her fictionalization of Lady Isabella showed extreme ingratitude.
Dalziel, Margaret, and Duncan Isles, editors. “Introduction, Chronology, and Appendix”. The Female Quixote, Oxford University Press.
xxi
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Editor Halsband, Robert, Clarendon Press.
3: 8
Literary responses
Charlotte Lennox
In Fielding's detailed comparison of the novel with Don Quixote, Lennox emerges superior to Cervantes
in morality, probability, and character-drawing, though Cervantes is superior in other ways. This enthusiastic review was widely reprinted.
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford.
176
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
Teresia Constantia Phillips
An outcry greeted the publication, and pamphlets of attack and defence followed. The Gentleman's Magazine printed two anonymous epistles addresssed to TCP
in August. After the second volume appeared, Henry Muilman
made an attempt to...
Literary responses
Laetitia Pilkington
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
wrote in her copy of the London reprint of LP
's Memoirs, as good Poetry as Pope
s [sic].
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, and Laetitia Pilkington. “Annotation”. The Memoirs of Mrs. Laetitia Pilkington.
