Isobel Grundy (Essay Date Spring 1982)

SOURCE: Grundy, Isobel. "The Politics of Female Authorship: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Reaction to the Printing of Her Poems." The Book Collector 31, no. 1 (spring 1982): 19-37.

In the following essay, Grundy reviews Montagu's personal annotations of Dodsley's Collection of Poems, which included poems printed without her permission. In the marginalia, Montagu claims some poems and vehemently denies writing others, revealing her thoughts on the controversies of her publication. Grundy suggests that the annotations add to the portrait of Montagu as a reluctant writer, with mixed emotions about being published.

In the stormy career of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu the ambition of authorship played a large but mostly secret part. One of the earliest controversies to involve her was Edmund Curll's illicit publication of three more or less scandalous poems which she had been quietly circulating in manuscript among her friends; one of...