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Mary Montagu was one of the most extraordinary characters in the
world. She was a self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a
radical, a feminist but also an entitled aristocrat and a society
wit with powerful friends at court. In 1716 she travelled across
Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British
ambassador. Her letters remain as fresh as the day they were
penned: enchanted by her discoveries of the life of Turkish women
behind the veil, by Arabic poetry and by contemporary medical
practices - including inoculation. For two years she lovingly
observed Ottoman society as a participant, with affection,
intelligence and an astonishing lack of prejudice.
In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's husband Edward Montagu was
appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman
Empire. Despite discouragement from friends that feared for her
safety, she accompanied her husband to Turkey and wrote an
extraordinary series of letters that recorded her experiences as a
traveller and her impressions of Ottoman culture and society. These
letters, addressed primarily to her sister and to Alexander Pope,
became the basis for a highly crafted text that was not published
until 1763. Like many women who rebelled against gender
conventions, Montagu was the target of vicious attacks from her
contemporaries. But her status as a woman traveller is crucial to
her distinctive perspective, and one can argue that her letters
offer a feminist alternative to much of the orientalist writing of
both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This edition includes
a broad selection of related historical documents on Turkey, women
in the Arab world, Islam, and "Oriental" tales written in Europe.
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