Essays and Poems and 'Simplicity', a Comedy (Clarendon Paperbacks) Book

Although Lady Mary was long well-known as a "character," a letter writer, and a traveler, there has recently been a renewed widespread and serious interest in her literary work. Despite being an aristocrat and a woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) made herself into a writer. She 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 or without her secret connivance) deal with issues still alive and accessible today: love, marriage, prejudice against women writers, and the medical breakthrough of smallpox innoculation. 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 writings.