

She had earlier written a set of six “town eclogues” that were witty adaptations of the Roman poet Virgil. For reasons not wholly clear, Lady Mary’s relationship with her husband was by this time merely formal and impersonal.Īt Twickenham Lady Mary embarked upon a period of intense literary activity. After his recall in 1718, they bought a house in Twickenham, west of London. In 1714 the Whigs came to power, and Edward Wortley Montagu was in 1716 appointed ambassador to Turkey, taking up residence with his wife in Constantinople (now Istanbul). The daughter of the 5th Earl of Kingston and Lady Mary Fielding (a cousin of the novelist Henry Fielding), she eloped with Edward Wortley Montagu, a Whig member of Parliament, rather than accept a marriage that had been arranged by her father. Her beauty was marred by a severe attack of smallpox while she was still a young woman, and she later pioneered in England the practice of inoculation against the disease, having noticed the effectiveness of this precaution during a stay in Turkey. She is further remembered as an essayist, feminist, traveler, and eccentric. She is principally remembered as a prolific letter writer in almost every epistolary style she was also a distinguished minor poet, always competent, sometimes glittering and genuinely eloquent.

Her literary genius, like her personality, had many facets. 21, 1762, London), the most colourful Englishwoman of her time and a brilliant and versatile writer. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, née Pierrepont, (baptized May 26, 1689, London, Eng.-died Aug.

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