‘Her letters [have] an immediacy and vivacity that remain as fresh as the mosaics on the ancient monuments she saw and the eastern gardens that gave her such delight’ -Anita Desai
Lady Wortley Montagu (1689- 1762), was described by a contemporary, as ‘one of the most extraordinary shining characters in the world…’
Her newly edited letters tell of her travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716, where her husband had been appointed Ambassador. Her liveliness makes the Letters wonderfully readable, and her
singular intelligence provides us with insights that were exceptional for their time: the paradoxical freedoms conferred on Muslim women by the veil, the value of experimental work by Turkish doctors on inoculation and the beauty of Arab poetry and culture. The ability to study another culture according to its own values and to see herself through the eyes of others makes Lady Mary one of the most fascinating of early travel writers and commentators.
