This book is the first to look at Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's achievement as a vital figure in the women's literary tradition. Robert Halsband's book on her life, the sixth this century and published in 1956, was the first to apply scholarly techniques to establishing the facts. The inaccurate accounts given before Halsband testify to Lady Mary's compelling interest as a woman who wrote, travelled, campaigned publicly for medical advance, gossiped, and was involved
in high-profile literary quarrels. Knowledge of her life has made considerable gains since Halsband, as understanding of the issues involved in trying to move between the roles of proper lady and woman writer has increased enormously. This life fruitfully exploits the tension between literary history
and feminist reading. Isobel Grundy highlights Montagu's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understanding of the implications of this for gender and class imperatives, the frustrations and concessions involved in her collaborations with male writers, the punitive responses of society, the gaps at every stage of her life between her ascertainable circumstances and her construction of herself in letters and other writings. The book situates those writings in relation to her own
theorizing and her very wide reading in women's texts as well as men's. Finally, it looks at a range of contemporary and near-contemporary responses.
- ISBN10 0198187653
- ISBN13 9780198187653
- Publish Date 22 March 2001 (first published 15 April 1999)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Oxford University Press
- Format Paperback
- Pages 703
- Language English