Best known as a letter writer, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote verses all her life and frequently referred to herself as a "poet." From the young girl, as she later described herself, "trespassing" in Latin and Greek sources to the old woman haunted "by the Daemon of Poesie" (as quoted by Isobel Grundy in Essays and Poems, 1977), Montagu repeatedly turned to the forms of Augustan verse--satires, verse epistles, mock epics, translations, essays, ballads, and songs--to respond to events around her and, indirectly, to give public form to her private feelings.

Montagu was born on 26 May 1689, the first daughter of Evelyn and Mary Pierrepont. Her father became earl of Kingston the year after her birth. Montagu's early influences were the same as those of her male contemporaries: the classics, John Dryden, and French romances. However, denied a classical education because she was a woman, she was educated at home...