Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Her Place in the Eighteenth Century
Robert Habsland introduces an intrepid traveller, an appreciative tourist and an ardent advocate of feminism; Lady Mary was the first distinguished woman of letters that England had seen.
Let Men who glory in their better sense,
Read, hear, and learn Humility from hence;
No more let them Superior Wisdom boast,
They can but equal M-nt-g-e at most.
This doggerel appears on a crudely printed broadside entitled “Lady M-y W-rtly M-nt-g-e The Female Traveller In the Turkish Dress” and above it a curiously dressed and bejewelled woman holding a book.
This was Lady Mary’s “image” soon after she returned from Turkey, where she had accompanied her husband on his Embassy from 1716 to 1718. To be sure, other ambassadorial wives had gone to Constantinople, but only as discreet consorts; none had made it the basis of a public literary reputation.
Lady Mary’s earlier travels had been negligible—the dutiful social round from Nottinghamshire or Yorkshire to London for the season. She now traversed the entire continent to penetrate the stranger, more mysterious world of Islam.
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