6/8/2023 0 Comments Turkish embassy letters![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Montagu’s letters can be studied in the context of “intercultural” relations between a well-educated and wealthy woman from the British upper class and Ottoman women, who were actually seen and subsequently described by her (unlike Paul Rycaut in the previous century who never saw the women but still went ahead and gave a detailed description of the harem). There are also selections from the letters of Pope and from various “Orientalist Fictions” that help to situate her work in the larger framework of European-Ottoman encounter and exchange. Not only does this edition have these, it offers an excellent apparatus that includes a chronology of events related to the life of Montagu, and more than one hundred pages of additional information, ranging from selections of other letters by her, to a discussion of her role in the history of smallpox inoculation, and brief excerpts illustrating European views of Islam. I have always wanted a solidly researched and well annotated paperback edition of the letters, with notes at the bottom of the page (rather than those cumbersome endnotes), a good introduction, and a wide-ranging bibliography. This edition of the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s Turkish Embassy Letters has solved a problem for me. ![]()
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