Item #106804 Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M-y W--y M--e: written during her travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to persons of distinction, men of letters, &c. in different parts of Europe. Which contain among other curious relations, accounts of the policy and manners of the Turks; Drawn from Sources that have been inaccessible to other Travellers. A new edition. The four volumes complete in one. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M-y W--y M--e: written during her travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, to persons of distinction, men of letters, &c. in different parts of Europe. Which contain among other curious relations, accounts of the policy and manners of the Turks; Drawn from Sources that have been inaccessible to other Travellers. A new edition. The four volumes complete in one.

1785. London: printed for J. Osborne and T. Griffin, in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, and J. Mozley, Gainsbrough, M.DCC.LXXXV [1785].

Sm. 8vo, ix, [3], 212 pp. Early or original calf, red morocco label. Early signature of Julia Aglionby and bookplate of Staffield Hall (home of the Aglionby-Fetherstonhaugh families). Free endpapers removed, a very pleasant copy.

§ An attractive later edition of Montagu’s travel memoirs. Lady Mary and her husband, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, travelled overland to Turkey in 1716. Her letters, probably intended for publication from the start, are the first known secular account of the Near East by a Western woman. Lady Mary rightly emphasised the novelty of her accounts as a woman traveller with access to female-only environments. Her descriptions of Turkish bath houses are only one part of what made her letters fascinating and very popular. ESTC T79453: 6 UK and 12 US. Wayward Women, pp. 32-34. See also Cox II p.229. Item #106804

Price: $750.00