SOURCE: Introduction to Turkish Embassy Letters, by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, edited by Malcolm Jack, The University of Georgia Press, 1993, pp. vii-xxxvii.

In this essay, Desai surveys the biographical background to the writing of the Turkish Embassy Letters, the circumstances of their publication, and the reception they received.

At a gathering, in 1697, of eminent Whigs with literary and political ambitions at the Kit-Kat Club, Lord Kingston nominated his daughter Mary as their toast for the year. When the others objected that they had never set eyes on the candidate, he had her finely dressed and brought to the tavern. She had her health drunk by all present and was passed from lap to lap of the poets and statesmen gathered there. Her granddaughter, Lady Louisa Stuart, was often to describe this heady experience of being ‘feasted with sweetmeats, overwhelmed with caresses’, but went on to say, ‘and … what...