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, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
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, 1965–1967, 3 vols.
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, 1893, 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, 1986, pp. 3-21.
17
Textual Production
Alice Meynell
She often used this column to address the works of literary women of the past. She judged Jane Austen
inferior to Charlotte Brontë
, accepting Brontë's opinion that Austen lacked what she, by implication, possessed:...
Textual Production
George Paston
Another eighteenth-century biography by GP
appeared: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Her Times.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Textual Production
Anita Desai
At Cambridge in 1991, AD
composed an introduction for an edition of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
's Turkish Embassy Letters, which appeared from Pickering and Chatto
in 1993 and from Virago Press
in 1994.
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
, 1 Mar.–31 May 1982, pp. 19-37.
35-6
Textual Production
Mary Astell
MA
was an inveterate annotator of books; she had some volumes bound with blank pages added for her notes. Among occasional writings produced by her friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
were angry marginalia in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Anita Desai
AD
writes with insight about Montagu
. Like a novelist, she sets out to make sense of discordant elements in the writer's character (the natural inclination to intrigue,
Desai, Anita, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. “Introduction”. Turkish Embassy Letters, edited by Malcolm Jack and Malcolm Jack, University of Georgia Press, 1993, p. vii - xxxvii.
xi
the class prejudices, and wild...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Seymour Montague
The third epistle performs the conventional act of praising historical women: the monarchs Elizabeth I
and Catherine the Great
of Russia for their exercise of power, the French scholar Anne Dacier
, and eleven British...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Barbara Hofland
BH
also pays much attention in her poems to other writers. Stanzas to the River Don footnotes Wortley Hall as a former home of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
.
Hofland, Barbara. Poems. Printed by J. Montgomery, and sold by Vernor and Hood, 1805.
6-11 and n
Ode to Apathy...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Dervla Murphy
DM
's vivid narrative and her discriminating evaluation make this one of the liveliest, as well as the most accurate, of short accounts of Montagu
.
Murphy, Dervla et al. “Introduction”. Embassy to Constantinople, Century, 1988, pp. 7-37.
7-37
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Sophia Hume
She cites both her experience with a child, and the way she owed the benefit of her own conversion to the affliction of having smallpox. But the ultimate argument against inoculation, she says, is that...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Clara Balfour
In her general overview of the history of English literature during these centuries, she focuses especially on English poets because as she says, great poets not only give form, power and beauty to a nation's...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho
, the patriotic heroism...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Flora Tristan
One chapter, entitled English Women, criticizes British social systems, and details the consequences women suffer because of the indissolubility of marriage.
Tristan, Flora. Flora Tristan’s London Journal, 1840. Translators Palmer, Dennis and Giselle Pincetl, Charles River Books, 1980.
About the first twenty pages are occupied by MT
's early reminiscences, probably written not long after her first husband's death: she frankly recorded her emotional disturbance over that event.
Trench, Melesina. The Remains of the Late Mrs. Richard Trench. Editor Trench, Richard Chenevix, Second edition, revised, Parker and Bourn, 1862.
