Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont)

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Works in ECPA

alphabetical listing / listing in source editions

• AN ANSWER to a LOVE-LETTER. ()
• Answer to the foregoing Lines. ()
• EPILOGUE To MARY, Queen of SCOTS. Design'd to be spoken by Mrs. OLDFIELD. ()
• An EPISTLE to Lord B — ()
• The GENTLEMAN's Answer. ()
• In Answer to a LADY who advised RETIREMENT. ()
• The LADY's Resolve. Written extempore on a Window. ()
• The LOVER: A Ballad. ()
• A RECEIPT to Cure the Vapours. Written to Lady J———n. ()
• SIX TOWN ECLOGUES. ()
• VERSES written in a GARDEN. ()

• Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758]. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.001)
  • SIX TOWN ECLOGUES.
  • The LOVER: A Ballad.
  • The LADY's Resolve. Written extempore on a Window.
  • The GENTLEMAN's Answer.
  • An EPISTLE to Lord B —
  • EPILOGUE To MARY, Queen of SCOTS. Design'd to be spoken by Mrs. OLDFIELD.
  • A RECEIPT to Cure the Vapours. Written to Lady J———n.
• Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. IV. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758]. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.004)
  • Answer to the foregoing Lines.
  • VERSES written in a GARDEN.
  • AN ANSWER to a LOVE-LETTER.
  • In Answer to a LADY who advised RETIREMENT.

Source editions

• Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. I. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758]. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.001)
• Dodsley, Robert, 1703-1764. A Collection of Poems in Six Volumes. By Several Hands. Vol. IV. London: printed by J. Hughs, for R. and J. Dodsley, 1763 [1st ed. 1758]. 6v.: music; 8⁰. (ESTC T131163; OTA K104099.004)

Biographical note

Born Mary Pierrepont, eldest child of Evelyn Pierrepont, Earl (and later 1st Duke) of Kingston (1667-1726), and his wife Lady Mary, née Fielding (c. 1669-1692), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was privately educated and began writing poetry at an early age. In 1712 she eloped with and secretly married Edward Wortley Montagu (1678-1761), MP, whose friendship with Addison introduced her to the author's circle. She also met and became friendly with Alexander Pope and John Gay. In 1716 she moved to Turkey with her husband who had been appointed ambassador to Constantinople. She took a keen interest in Islamic culture, evident from her correspondence, and even translated some Turkish verse. Herself a victim of small-pox, she became, on her return to London, a campaigner for the practice of inoculation, which she observed in Turkey. Montagu continued writing verse, some of which appeared in magazines, but the majority of which remained unpublished. Her political alliance with the Whigs led to poetical feuds with both Pope and Swift, although Pope may have been bitter with her rejection of any amorous suggestions. Her acquaintance with Francesco Algarotti (1712-1764) in 1736 led her to leave her husband for the Continent three years later, where she would remain for the rest of her life, living in Italy and France. She met , on his Grand Tour with Thomas Gray, who was responsible for the publication of some of her poems in 1747 and possibly in Dodsley's Collection (1748). She returned to England, following the death of her husband in 1761, but already suffering from breast cancer, she died six months after her arrival on 21 August 1762, aged 73. Her letters from Turkey were published posthumously in 1763 and were frequently reprinted. Her poems were edited by Isaac Reed in 1768, and her collected Works by James Dallaway in 1803. Her great-grandson Lord Wharncliffe edited her Letters and Works in 1837.

Bibliography

DMI 1930; ODNB 19029; NCBEL 1584

Manuscripts

• Smith, Margaret M. Index of English Literary Manuscripts. Vol. III, 1700-1800 . London: Mansell, 1986-1997. Pt. 2 Gay-Philips. 187-233. Print. 4 volumes.

Editions

• Grundy, Isobel and Robert Halsband, eds. Essays and Poems and Simplicity, a comedy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977 (rptd 2001). Print.
• Halsband, Robert, ed. The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965-7. Print. 3 volumes.

Biography

• Grundy, Isobel. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment. Oxford; New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print.
• Halsband, Robert. The Life of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956. Print.

Reference works

• Anscomb, Lisa. Montagu, Mary Wortley, Lady, 1689-1762. Literature Online biography. Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healey, 2000. Web. 21 Feb. 2016. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:lion&rft_id=xri:lion:ft:ref:BIO001489:0
• Baines, Paul, Julian Ferraro, Pat Rogers, eds. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Eighteenth-Century Writers and Writing, 1660-1789. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. 240-241. Print.
• Fairer, David. English Poetry of the Eighteenth Century 1700-1789. Longman Literature in English Series. Harlow: Longman, 2003. 278-279. Print.
• Radcliffe, David H., ed. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762). Spenser and the Tradition: ENGLISH POETRY 1579-1830. Center for Applied Technologies in the Humanities, Virginia Tech, 2006. Web. 21 Oct. 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20170908014740/http://spenserians.cath.vt.edu/AuthorRecord.php?recordid=1181.
• Suarez, Michael F. Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley. A Collection of Poems by Several Hands [1782]. Ed. Robert Dodsley and Michael F. Suarez. Vol. I. London: Routledge/Thoemmes, 1997. 184-186. Print. 6 volumes.
• Todd, Janet, ed. A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers 1660-1800. Paperback edition, revised. Lanham et al.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1987. 222-223. Print.

Criticism

• Gardner, Kevin J. The Aesthetics of Intimacy: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her Readers. Papers on Language and Literature 34 (1998): 113-133. Print.
• Grundy, Isobel. The Politics of Female Authorship: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Reaction to the Printing of Her Poems. The Book Collector 31 (1982): 19-37. Print.
• Landry, Donna. Alexander Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and the Literature of Social Comment. Zwicker, Steven N., ed. English Literature 1650-1740. Cambridge: CUP, 1998. 307-329. Print.
• McLaverty, James. 'Of Which Being Publick the Publick Judge': Pope and the Publication of 'Verses Address'd to the Imitator of Horace'. Studies in Bibliography 51 (1998): 183-204. Print.
• Snyder, Elizabeth. Female Heroism and Legal Discourse in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's 'Epistle from Mrs. Y(onge) to Her Husband'. English Language Notes 34 (1997): 10-22. Print.
• Spacks, Patricia Meyer. Imaginations Warm and Tender: Pope and Lady Mary. South Atlantic Quarterly 83 (1984): 207-215. Print.