Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
By: Isobel Grundy.
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 680
Subjects: Montagu, Mary Wortley, Lady, 1689-1762.; Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.; Diplomats' spouses -- Great Britain -- Biography.; Authors, English -- 18th century -- Biography.; English letters -- History and criticism.
Description: Isobel Grundy is the first to examine in detail Lady Mary's family situation and social relationships, or to situate Montagu's writing life in relation to both tradition and innovation, to enlightenment circles and political agendas, and to the emerging tradition of women's writing, in which she herself was a key figure.

Grundy highlights Lady Mary's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understanding of the pressures of class and gender imperatives on such upstart desires, her conflicted negotiations with manuscript culture and the new world of print, the punitive responses of society, the deep dissonance at every stage of her life between her actual circumstances and the constructed self of her letters and other writings.

She also situates Montagu's work in the context of her exceptionally wide reading in both men's and women's texts, and her own theorizing of her social world.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [631]-655) and index.