Skip to main content Skip to search Skip to search

Literary Collections English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

Essays and Poems and 'Simplicity', a Comedy

by (author) Mary Wortley Montagu

edited by Robert Halsband & Isobel Grundy

Publisher
Oxford University Press
Initial publish date
Apr 1999
Category
English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780198122883
    Publish Date
    Apr 1999
    List Price
    $117.95

Add it to your shelf

Where to buy it

Description

Despite being an aristocrat and a woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689 - 1762) made herself a writer. Lady Mary has long been well-known as a 'character' a letter writer, and a traveller, this revised paperback edition of her non-epistolary writings appears at a time when interest in her literary work is now widespread and serious. Lady Mary 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 her secret connivance) deal with issues still alive and accessible today: love, marriage, prejudice against women writers, the medical breakthrough of smallpox innoculation. Her comedy, Simplicity, has been recently revived in productions around the U.K. 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 writing.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada

Editorial Reviews

'Lady mary Wortley Montague's poems, essays, and play, splendidly edited by Robert Halsband and Isobel Grundy...is another reprint, this one in paperback with a fine new preface by Grundy, and ought to be widely acquired. The originality, strength, and brilliance of Lady Mary's work is often dazzling, but never more so than when seen here as a corpus' Eighteenth Century Studies

'This is a welcome new scholarly edition of Lady Mary's non-epistolary works. It also makes entertaining and thought-provoking reading!' David Doughan, Fawcett Library - Newsletter, Oct '93

'scholarly edition...For the first time I have been able to read the full text of her poetically accomplished, but cruel, attack on Pope after their friendship had ruptured...I learned a great deal from the footnotes, which though economical carry an immense weight of scholarship.' The New Rambler D IX

Other titles by

Other titles by

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume A – Fourth Edition

The Medieval Period - The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century - The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Jason Rudy, Barry V. Qualls & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 1: The Medieval Period – Revised Third Edition

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, Volume 5: The Victorian Era - Third Edition

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume B - Third Edition

The Age of Romanticism - The Victorian Era - The Twentieth Century and Beyond

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 4: The Age of Romanticism - Third Edition

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

Coryats Crudities: Selections

by (author) Thomas Coryate
edited by Philip S. Palmer
general editor Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Concise Volume A - Third Edition

The Medieval Period - The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century - The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

A Plea for Emigration; or Notes of Canada West

A Broadview Anthology of British Literature Edition

by (author) Mary Ann Shadd
consultant editor Phanuel Antwi
general editor Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls & Claire Waters

The Broadview Anthology of British Literature Volume 2: The Renaissance and the Early Seventeenth Century - Third Edition

edited by Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Wendy Lee, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome McGann, Anne Prescott, Barry Qualls, Jason Rudy & Claire Waters

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

by (author) Franz Kafka
translated by Ian Johnston
general editor Joseph Black, Leonard Conolly, Kate Flint, Isobel Grundy, Don LePan, Roy Liuzza, Jerome J. McGann, Anne Lake Prescott, Barry V. Qualls & Claire Waters