SOURCE: Hornbeak, Katherine G. “New Light on Mrs. Montagu.” In The Age of Johnson: Essays Presented to Chauncey Brewster Tinker, edited by Frederick W. Hilles, pp. 349-61. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949.

In the following essay, Hornbeak examines those letters of Montagu that relate to her relationship with James Woodhouse, a poet and her employee, and what they impart about various aspects of her life.

Luckily for Mrs. Montagu's peace of mind and prestige, the most unsympathetic account of her by a contemporary was not published until nearly a century after her death. Occasionally during her lifetime some critical comment on the Queen of the Blues struck a discordant note in the chorus of adulation. In 1785 Richard Cumberland's pretentious Vanessa was immediately identified as Mrs. Montagu. In 1794 Mathias in The Pursuits of Literature devoted a couplet to her:

Nor can I pass LYCISCA MONTAGU, Her yelp though feeble...