Abstract
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was known as an innovator during her lifetime. Montagu’s conception of herself as living an experimental life was particularly invested in her writing. She wrote poetry and prose; however, her most experimental contribution to English literature was arguably her innovative use of epistolary form in manuscript and print. She wrote a handful of anonymous letters addressing public events for publication, but most of her letters were not published during her lifetime. In her manuscript letters, she experimented with the idea that women’s letter writing could offer a counter history to the public historical record. She prepared a selection of her letters, documenting her travels through Europe to Turkey, known as the Turkish Embassy Letters, for posthumous publication. In it Montagu uses the epistolary form to make cross-cultural comparisons of the customs, fashions and routines of women’s lives in different locales, and to develop fresh ideas about women’s decorum for a new age. She suggests that the epistolary form itself posits new ways of thinking about women’s history.
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Notes
- 1.
See also Halsband (1956).
- 2.
On women’s letters in an earlier period, see Daybell (2006).
- 3.
Diana G. Barnes, ‘New Knowledge: An Epistolary Case Study’ presented at the University of Adelaide, September 2019.
- 4.
Halsband (1953) identified Montagu’s authorship of the letter.
- 5.
On the identification of Montagu’s authorship, see Halsband (1947).
- 6.
On Montagu’s engagement with prior travel writing, see O’Loughlin (2018, 30–64).
- 7.
Montagu’s juvenilia include a poetic imitation of Virgil with gender reversed: she had been thinking about this experiment for some time (Grundy 1999, 19).
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Barnes, D.G. (2021). Experiment in Prose: Authority and Experience in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters. In: Aughterson, K., Philips, D. (eds) Women Writers and Experimental Narratives. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49651-7_3
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