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.
Nearly a decade after his death Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
addressed to the widow an poetic argument against infidelity so jaunty as to suggest she did not think him a husband worth mourning.
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. Essays and Poems and Simplicity, A Comedy. Editors Halsband, Robert and Isobel Grundy, Oxford University Press.
257-8
Reception
Anne Irwin
AI
's Epistle to Pope was anthologized in The New Foundling Hospital for Wit, in the 1770s. Mary Robinson
, praising it in 1799, thought it was written by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
.
Textual Production
Elizabeth Justice
With sublime disregard for relevance, her elaborate title-page further promises a translation from Spanish, collected by the author of the Russian parts of the book, of an account of relics at Oviedo. Despite this...
FAK
's literary allusions here are interesting. Thomas Hood
's The Song of the Shirt is cited more than once, though Kortright insists that the governess is worse off than the seamstress because she is...
Dedications
L. E. L.
It was dedicated to Lady Emmeline Stuart Wortley
, descendant of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
. A modern reprint appeared in 1992.
Textual Features
L. E. L.
This novel provides a satirical portrait of high society in early eighteenth-century England. It centres on Henrietta, Countess of Marchmont, an upper-class orphan enduring a loveless marriage and imperilled by her first visit to...
Literary responses
Lady Caroline Lamb
When Glenarvon first appeared, said Lady Caroline, William Lamb
admired it so much that it was instrumental in bringing the separated couple back together.
Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan,. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press.
2: 202
Joanna Baillie
discerned its author's ability, but added, Her...
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
Publishing
Charlotte Lennox
Lennox made the adaptation at Garrick
's suggestion, following an unsuccessful one by Robert Dodsley
decades earlier.
Carlile, Susan. Charlotte Lennox. An Independent Mind. University of Toronto Press.
259
An edition followed on 27 November. Lady Bute
(Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
's daughter) had politely...
Textual Features
Janet Little
She consistently takes a challenging stance in face of authority. Ironically (in view of Johnson's championing of women writers and Burns's snobbish attitude about herself) she uses Samuel Johnson
as a symbol of the tyrant-critic...
Reception
Judith Cowper Madan
Pope
complimented Judith Cowper (later Madan)
in To Erinna on her (still unpublished) lines to him. He praised her for not seeking, like Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, to emulate the sun's brightness, but for...
Friends, Associates
Judith Cowper Madan
The poems that Judith Cowper wrote as an unmarried young woman suggest that she moved easily both in court and in literary circles. She probably met the poet Alexander Pope
in Jervas
's studio. Pope...
Family and Intimate relationships
Judith Cowper Madan
Soon afterwards Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
, appropriating her voice in Miss Cooper to —, makes the unmarried Judith Cowper express a tormented love for Lysander, who in this poem is uncaring and...
