Selected Letters (Penguin Classics) - Softcover

Montagu, Mary Wortley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140434909 ISBN 13: 9780140434903

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 1997

Synopsis

A revised selection of Lady Montagu's letters. Besides presenting a vivid picture of manners in a picturesque age, they contain a unique series of impressions from foreign courts seldom visited and nowhere else so intimately described. Lady Mary was the wife of a popular ambassador and, wielding the charm of a strong personality, was enabled to see and hear many things of which the ordinary traveler, or resident abroad, knew-and knows-little or nothing. Originally written, for the most part, to her sisters, her daughter, or to very intimate friends, her Letters are unusually detailed and frank. She was a keen observer, not superior to the love of gossip with a quick eye for the telling features of a story or situation, and an easy, effective style.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Whether describing the Turkish baths in Sofia or the London social scene, negotiating her marriage settlement or declaring her passion for a young Italian, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) wrote some of the liveliest letters in the English language. Ranging over everything from gossip to politics, science to literature, they reveal very different aspects of her personality to her husband, sister and female circle, to her beloved daughter and her errant son. The famous Embassy Letters from Constantinople were designed for publication, yet most are vividly personal. Several letters in this volume have never before appeared in print (one full of exuberant chamber-pot humour and another mocking men as 'vile inconstant toads'). In this superb selection, Isobel Grundy has included examples from every significant correspondence so as to do full justice 'to Montagu the writer, thinker and feminist, and to Lady Mary the friend and family member, the idealistic girl and sardonic old woman'.

About the Author:

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was a brilliant English writer and essayist of the 18th Century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140434909
• ISBN 13: 9780140434903
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 536
• Editor: Grundy Isobel