Turkish Embassy Letters
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
In 1716 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu went out with her husband, the new British ambassador to the Ottoman Porte, by Rotterdam, Vienna, Hanover and Prague, over the frozen plains of Hungary to Belgrade, Adrianople and Constantinople. She was one of the first Western women to see the inside of a harem and of a women’s bath, learnt Turkish, wore Turkish dress and had her son inoculated against the smallpox. Her fifty-two letters, published in 1763, a year after her death, with Mary Astell’s preface, are given here in the text of the first edition, newly edited with an introduction, notes and registers of persons, places and old words. Edited by Bernhard Trebuch. Reading sample: the introduction, Astell’s preface, letters I–X and the letters on the bath at Sophia and on the smallpox inoculation, with the registers.
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