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.
3: 173, 183
Photo of a full-length painting of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu by Jonathan Richardson recording her time in Turkey. She stands outdoors, with famous buildings of Constantinople (Istanbul) visible beyond. She is dressed in gold: a caftan whose deep V-neck and open skirt reveal a lace shift and long harem drawers. She also wears a gold cap which she calls a talpock on her dark hair, a blue cloak edged with ermine, pearl drop earrings, and pointed slippers. The presence of the young Black boy behind her is start

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
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, 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 Melesina Trench
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, Parker and Bourn.
18
Later pages mix letters...
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.
198
FT shows particular sympathy for Rosina Bulwer Lytton , whom she depicts...
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 Anna Seward
AS 's correspondence often deals with literary matters as well as with social matters and personalities. She writes with astonishing freedom to Hester Piozzi about the latter's travel book Observations and Reflections: not only...
Textual Production Anna Letitia Barbauld
Some of Barbauld's acutest social comment was linked with her pedagogy. Fashion, a Vision, probably written about 1792 for her first private paying pupil, and picking up some ideas from Wollstonecraft 's Vindication,...
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...
Textual Production Sarah Josepha Hale
SJH edited both The Letters of Madame de Sévigné , to Her Daughter and Friends and The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .
Okker, Patricia. Our Sister Editors. University of Georgia Press, p. 264 pp.
231n31
Textual Production Lady Louisa Stuart
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, 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, pp. 3-21.
17
Textual Production Lucy Aikin
From 1803 she reviewed for her brother Arthur 's Annual Review, where one of her subjects was the travel letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu .
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press.
501
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 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
Textual Production Mary Astell
Only four days after she and Montagu had both written poems together on the death of a young bride , MA wrote the bulk of her verse and prose preface to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
Textual Production Mary Seymour Montague
It is likely though not absolutely certain that the author was really female. Her pseudonym suggests Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (who had died nine years earlier, and whom this poem praises as the only woman...

Timeline

18 March 1748: Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his...

Writing climate item

18 March 1748

Robert Dodsley first offered for sale his influential Collection of Poems by Several Hands.

1750: The progressive Pope Benedict XIV appointed...

Building item

1750

The progressive Pope Benedict XIV appointed a woman, Maria Gaetana Agnesi (1718-99), as professor of mathematics at the University of Bologna .

1752: A severe epidemic of smallpox resulted in...

Building item

1752

A severe epidemic of smallpox resulted in 3,500 deaths in London, more than seventeen per cent of all recorded deaths this year.
Shuttleton, David. Smallpox and the Literary Imagination, 1660—1820. Cambridge University Press.
106

1754: The Royal College of Physicians made public...

Building item

1754

The Royal College of Physicians made public their official approval of inoculation for smallpox, as introduced to England by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu thirty-three years before.

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.

15 January 1759: The British Museum (including what had formerly...

Building item

15 January 1759

The British Museum (including what had formerly been known as the King's Library ), established six years earlier, was first opened to the public.

13 September 1759: A British party under James Wolfe climbed...

National or international item

13 September 1759

A British party under James Wolfe climbed the Heights of Abraham at Quebec and beat the French in battle there.

12 February 1767-5 June 1769: Hugh Kelly issued his periodical The Babler,...

Writing climate item

12 February 1767-5 June 1769

Hugh Kelly issued his periodicalThe Babler, opening with the usual bow towards the Tatler and Spectator.

April 1768: The first volume of The New Foundling Hospital...

Writing climate item

April 1768

The first volume of The New Foundling Hospital for Wit was published: an influential poetry anthology linked to the political opposition.

January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...

Writing climate item

January 1781-December 1782

The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...

14 May 1796: After some years of investigating the protection...

Building item

14 May 1796

After some years of investigating the protection given by cowpox against smallpox, Edward Jenner carried out his first, experimental cowpox injection of a healthy young boy. His subject showed no reaction when later inoculated with...

July 1796: The explorer Mungo Park, abandoned and anxious...

Building item

July 1796

The explorer Mungo Park , abandoned and anxious on the banks of the Niger River in what is now Mali, was taken in, housed and fed by African village women, who composed and sang...

May 1829: A Ladies' Bazaar to benefit Spanish refugees,...

Building item

May 1829

A Ladies' Bazaar to benefit Spanish refugees, held at the Hanover Square Rooms in London, patron the Duke of Wellington , raised the remarkable sum of £2,000.

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

1861

A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...

1879: Walter Bagehot's Literary Studies, a two-volume...

Writing climate item

1879

Walter Bagehot 's Literary Studies, a two-volume collection of his literary essays, was published posthumously with a memoir by Richard Holt Hutton .

Texts

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