Despite being an aristocrat and a woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 - 1762) made herself a writer. Lady Mary has long been well-known as a 'character' a letter writer, and a traveller, this revised paperback edition of her non-epistolary writings appears at a time when interest in her literary work is now widespread and serious. Lady Mary saw herself as 'haunted by the Daemon of Poesie'. She wrote literary criticism of Addison and the only essay by a woman published in the Spectator, together with spirited verse replies to Pope and Swift and passionate love-poems which dispute the period's label 'Age of Reason'. Her essays (some published anonymously in newspapers) and poems (many of which appeared with her secret connivance) deal with issues still alive and accessible today: love, marriage, prejudice against women writers, the medical breakthrough of smallpox innoculation. Her comedy, Simplicity, has been recently revived in productions around the U.K. Hard-hitting, eloquent and often funny, the work of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu will be essential reading for the growing number of scholars, students and general readers of women's writing.

Mary Wortley Montagu's profile page

Robert Halsband's profile page

Isobel Grundy's profile page

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

'Lady mary Wortley Montague's poems, essays, and play, splendidly edited by Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy...is another reprint, this one in paperback with a fine new preface by Grundy, and ought to be widely acquired. The originality, strength, and brilliance of Lady Mary's work is often dazzling, but never more so than when seen here as a corpus' Eighteenth Century Studies

'This is a welcome new scholarly edition of Lady Mary's non-epistolary works. It also makes entertaining and thought-provoking reading!' David Doughan, Fawcett Library - Newsletter, Oct '93

'scholarly edition...For the first time I have been able to read the full text of her poetically accomplished, but cruel, attack on Pope after their friendship had ruptured...I learned a great deal from the footnotes, which though economical carry an immense weight of scholarship.' The New Rambler D IX