SOURCE: Blunt, Reginald. “Introductory.” In Mrs. Montagu “Queen of the Blues”: Her Letters and Friendships from 1762-1800: Volume 1: 1762-1776, pp. 1-11. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1923.

In the following essay, Blunt discusses Montagu's private and professional life, focusing on her letters and the critical response to them.

MR. Cambridge.

And what does Dr. Johnson call her? 

FANNY Burney.

“Queen,” to be sure. “Queen of the Blues!” 

Madame D'Arblay's Diaries.

The family, child life, girlhood, marriage, and earlier correspondence of Mrs. Montagu have been dealt with in detail in Mrs. Emily Climenson's two volumes mentioned in the Preface, to which the present work forms the sequel, and to those pages readers must be referred for the story of her life up to the completion of her forty-first year. The briefest recapitulation of a few salient facts here will suffice, therefore, to enable the reader unacquainted with the earlier volumes to...