Mary longs for adventure, freedom and love. When her powerful father schemes to marry her off to a foolish aristocrat, she has to find a man who will offer her the independence she craves. Never one to fear a scandal, she elopes with Edward Wortley Montagu. Mary uses her charm and connections to live a […]
A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu longs for adventure, freedom and love, believing that only by truly living can she ever escape the stalking crow of Death… An aristocratic woman in 18th-century England is expected to act in certain ways. But Mary has never let society’s expectations stifle her: she writes celebrated poetry and articles advocating for […]
How Mary Wortley Montagu and other great 18th-century women were forgotten
Diminished, disparaged, derided. That’s how Sean Lusk describes the fate of Mary Wortley Montagu and other great women of the 18th century. He looks at how they came to be forgotten. I had not intended to write a novel about Mary Wortley Montagu. Her Turkish Embassy Letters were the inspiration for the character of Aunt […]
Discovering Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s porcelain
What does a biographer do when they learn something new about their subject after their book has been published? This happened to Jo Willett, author of The Pioneering Life of Mary Wortley Montagu, when she found out about some porcelain linked with the 18th-century smallpox inoculation pioneer. We’re delighted that Jo is sharing her discovery […]
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, mental health pioneer
It’s hard to be more historical and contemporary in these days of Covid jabs than this past month, when two important anniversaries in the history of immunisation against serious contagions have taken place. In April 1721 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu inoculated her daughter, Mary, with smallpox, but although the little girl survived, inoculation wasn’t widely […]