Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (née Pierrepont; 15 May 168921 August 1762) was an English aristocrat, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762. Although having regularly socialised with the court of George I and George Augustus, Prince of Wales (later King George II) , Lady Mary is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which Billie Melman describes as "the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient". Aside from her writing, Mary is also known for introducing and advocating for smallpox inoculation to Britain after her return from Turkey. Her writings address and challenge the hindering contemporary social attitudes towards women and their intellectual and social growth. Early life Lady Mary Pierrepont was born on 15 May 1689 at Holme Pierrepont Hall in Nottinghamshire, and baptised on 26 May 1689 at St. Paul's Church in Covent Garden, London. She was the eldest child of Evelyn Pierrepont, 1st Duke of Kingston-upon-Hull (c.1655–1726), and his first wife Mary Feilding (d. 20 December 1697), the only daughter of the third Earl of Denbigh (d.1685). Lady Mary had three younger siblings, two girls, Frances and Evelyn, and a boy, William. Lady Mary was a bright, free-spirited child who dreamed of greatness. She wrote in her diary, "I am going to write a history so uncommon." Aged seven, members of the newly formed Kit-Cat Club, a group of fashionable men, nominated her as the subject of their toast to the beauty of the season, and they had her name engraved on the glass goblet used for this purpose. As a child, she had a "desire of catching the setting sun"  and she would run across the meadow to "catch hold of the great golden ball of fire sinking on the horizon". However, she then realized that this activity "was impossible".