This is is the first critical study of one of the most important women writers of the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762), who produced a body of erudite and entertaining correspondence that spanned more than fifty years. Lady Mary's letters illuminate the difficulties encountered by a sensitive, intelligent, and gifted woman writer living through an era of significant cultural change. These letters display the tensions inherent in the competing demands of public and private life, revealing Lady Mary's own discomfort about the problems of authorship and authority in an age that held publication to be an improper activity for respectable women. Through the discourse of supposedly “private” letters, Lady Mary was able to find an avenue for her talents that brought her “public” stature without violating the imperatives of her position as a woman and an aristocrat. Cynthia Lowenthal argues persuasively that Lady Mary's letters, themselves central to the establishment of the familiar letter as an important eighteenthcentury genre, were self-consciously constructed as literary artifacts and crafted as part of a larger female epistolary tradition. Moreover, Lowenthal contends, the works of Lady Mary are essential to the feminist recuperation of women's writing precisely because she provided an aristocratic critique—a voice often ignored—of the class and gender codes of her day.

This book is the first to look at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's achievement as a vital figure in the women's literary tradition. Robert Halsband's book on her life, the sixth this century and published in 1956, was the first to apply scholarly techniques to establishing the facts. The inaccurateaccounts given before Halsband testify to Lady Mary's compelling interest as a woman who wrote, travelled, campaigned publicly for medical advance, gossiped, and was involved in high-profile literary quarrels. Knowledge of her life has made considerable gains since Halsband, as understanding of theissues involved in trying to move between the roles of proper lady and woman writer has increased enormously. This life fruitfully exploits the tension between literary history and feminist reading. Isobel Grundy highlights Montagu's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understandingof the implications of this for gender and class imperatives, the frustrations and concessions involved in her collaborations with male writers, the punitive responses of society, the gaps at every stage of her life between her ascertainable circumstances and her construction of herself in lettersand other writings. The book situates those writings in relation to her own theorizing and her very wide reading in women's texts as well as men's. Finally, it looks at a range of contemporary and near-contemporary responses.

300 years ago, in April 1721, a smallpox epidemic was raging in England. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu knew that she could save her 3-year-old daughter using the process of inoculation. She had witnessed this at first hand in Turkey, while she was living there as the wife of the British ambassador. She also knew that by inoculating - making her daughter the first person protected in the West - she would face opposition from doctors, politicians and clerics. Her courageous action eventually led to the eradication of smallpox and the prevention of millions of deaths.But Mary was more than a scientific campaigner. She mixed with the greatest politicians, writers, artists and thinkers of her day. She was also an important early feminist, writing powerfully and provocatively about the position of women.She was best friends with the poet Alexander Pope. They collaborated on a series of poems, which made her into a household name, an 'It Girl'. But their friendship turned sour and he used his pen to vilify her publicly.Aristocratic by birth, Mary chose to elope with Edward Wortley Montagu, whom she knew she did not love, so as to avoid being forced into marrying someone else. In middle age, her marriage stale, she fell for someone young enough to be her son - and, unknown to her, bisexual. She set off on a new life with him abroad. When this relationship failed, she stayed on in Europe, narrowly escaping the coercive control of an Italian conman.After twenty-two years abroad, she returned home to London to die. The son-in-law she had dismissed as a young man had meanwhile become Prime Minister.

In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s husband Edward Montagu was appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Montagu accompanied her husband to Turkey and wrote an extraordinary series of letters that recorded her experiences as a traveller and her impressions of Ottoman culture and society. This Broadview edition includes a broad selection of related historical documents on Turkey, women in the Arab world, Islam, and “Oriental” tales written in Europe.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was born on 26th May 1689 to, the soon to be titled, Earl of Kingston and Mary (Fielding) Pierrepoint. At age 3 Mary's mother died and so her Grandmother became responsible for her upbringing in her early years. Unfortunately, a few years later, when Mary was 9, her grandmother died and so she went back to live with her father at Thoresby Hall, in Nottinghamshire. Women were not formally educated at this time so Mary educated herself in her father's library, teaching herself Latin and devouring many classical texts. She was expected to attend to several of her father's needs however, including presiding over his dinner table where she became a sort of 'good luck charm' for many of his influential guests. During her teenage years, her true character began to reveal itself. She had already written several volumes of poetry and was intent on challenging social attitudes towards women which stifled their intellectual and social growth. Defying her father's wishes, she eloped in August 1712, to marry Edward Wortley Montagu. The following year she gave birth to a boy. Unfortunately, her husband, like her father was possessive and jealous. The marriage would not be as successful as she hoped. Now further tragedy was to strike. Her brother, only 20 years old, contracted and died from smallpox. Mary herself was to catch the disease two years later. Her survival led to her interest in the Turkish procedure of inoculating against the disease by introducing a small amount of the virus in order to build the body's immunity to the disease. She used this method with both of her children and encouraged its' widespread use in London despite resistance and scepticism by British doctors and prevailing medical opinion. In 1714 Edward Montagu was appointed to the Treasury which allowed Mary to shine at court. Her charm, wit and beauty was appreciated by George I, the Prince of Wales and many other influential and important London figures who soon became friends. Mary also met the famed poet Alexander Pope who was smitten with her beauty, elegance and wit. Although these feelings were not reciprocated, the two of them did correspond frequently. Her husband was next appointed as Ambassador to Istanbul (then called Constantinople), for several years. She also gave birth to her daughter, Mary at this time and continued to develop her flamboyant style sporting Turkish inspired clothes which she wore back in the UK contributing further to her distinctive appearance and aristocratic eccentricity. Her voyage home together with her other travels resulted in her writing sparkling prose in the form of Letters from Turkey. Although at the time many were circulated in manuscript form, as per her wishes, they were not published until a year after her death. Her letters to Pope were fewer now, although they provide part of the Embassy Letters for which she is so well known. Their subsequent estrangement and enmity now spilled over as each feuded with the other in clever and entertaining poems and publications. Mary understood that being a woman gave her a unique perspective, allowing her greater access to many places and customs barred to men. As she noted: "You will perhaps be surpriz'd at an Account so different from what you have been entertaind with by the common Voyage-writers who are very fond of speaking of what they don't know." In 1736, Mary met and fell in love with Francesco Algarotti. By 1739, besotted, she arranged to live with him in Italy, telling her husband and friends she needed to go abroad for her health. Their relationship fell apart in 1741 and Mary would now spend most of her remaining years travelling through Italy and France, putting down roots in several cities. In 1761, hearing that her husband had died, she returned home to England. She arrived in London in January 1762. It was to be her final journey. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu died on 21st August 1762 in London.