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.
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
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...
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
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.
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
Literary responses
Judith Cowper Madan
JCM
reaped a good deal of praise during her lifetime, but most of it must have been of questionable value to her as a poet. Pope
's To Erinna is typical in casting her as...
Literary responses
Marie-Catherine de Villedieu
In her copy of this text (an edition published in 1721 in twelve volumes),Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
wrote: plus delicat que Crebillon
[evidently the younger of this name, famous for erotic fiction], plus amusant...
