Title: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
First published: 1999
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.
Subjects: Authors, English, Biography, Diplomats' spouses, English Authors, English letters, History, History and criticism, Women and literature, Women authors, Montagu, mary wortley, lady, 1689-1762, English letters, history and criticism, Authors, biography, English Women authors
Places: Great Britain
People: Mary Wortley Montagu Lady (1689-1762)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: PR3604.Z5 G78 1999