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.
The title-page quotes Samuel Johnson
asserting that an author has nothing but his own merits to stand or fall on. The Birth of Genius, an irregular ode, offers advice to my son to love...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Singer Rowe
In a later generation Anna Letitia Barbauld
followed Hertford and Carter in celebrating ESR
her in poetry. Such different figures as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Clara Reeve
endorsed her. She had a huge following...
Residence
Rosina Bulwer Lytton, Baroness Lytton
During the final months before separating from her husband, Rosina Lytton lived at Berrymead Priory at Acton west of London (the house from which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
had made an early, unsuccessful attempt to...
Publishing
Elizabeth Robins
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...
Textual Features
Emma Roberts
Like other books of travel to the east, as far back as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
's Embassy Letters (composed 1716 -18, unpublished till 1763) this gains immensely by encompassing descriptions of Europe as well...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Rigby
The essay begins with a quotation from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and goes on to review several publications on the subject, including the Journal of the Women's Education Union (co-edited by Emily Shirreff
). ER
Textual Features
Clara Reeve
Her Address to the Reader notes the recent increase in the number of women writers commanding critical respect, and observes that every woman publishing with success will inspire a couple of others to try. Most...
Textual Features
Clara Reeve
In her preface a character named Preceptor makes Reeve's didactic purpose clear by enunciating a recipe for forming model citizens: It is a mark of a well-disposed mind, to believe your own country is the...
Travel
Ann Radcliffe
They arrived in Holland on 29 May, and travelled via Harwich, the Hague, Rotterdam, Delft, and Cologne to the valley of Adernach near the German border with Switzerland. They disliked...
Friends, Associates
Alexander Pope
Pope's relationships with women, particularly women who wrote, tended to be complicated and turbulent. They have been ably studied by scholar Valerie Rumbold
. Contrary to rumour, he apparently liked and respected Anne Finch
...
Publishing
Alexander Pope
He issued the final books of The Iliad of Homer in May 1720. The Odyssey of Homer (on which he had considerable help from collaborators) appeared in April 1725 and June 1726.
Pope, Alexander. The Poems of Alexander Pope. Editor Butt, John, Methuen; Yale University Press.
2: xiii-xiv
It...
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.
Nine months after her mother died, TCP
, aged thirteen, was raped by Thomas Grimes, a nobleman who got her drunk and tied her up. He was not, as long assumed, the future Lord Chesterfield
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...
Textual Production
George Paston
Another eighteenth-century biography by GP
appeared: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
and Her Times.
