Abstract
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu keenly wanted the reputation of being an original. She was fortunate in this ambition; there are very few records of English women visiting the Ottoman Empire before her. There are the important exceptions of the Quakers Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers, who set out in 1659 to convert the people of Alexandria but were held captive by the Inquisition on Malta. But apart from their account of their captivity, no women travellers wrote in English about visiting the Ottoman Empire before Lady Mary.2
I dare say You expect at least something very new in this Letter after I have gone a Journey not undertaken by any Christian of some 100 years.
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to Alexander Pope, 1 April 1717, from Adrianople1
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Notes
See Evans and Cheevers, Relation (1662).
See Cason, Relation of the whole proceedings (1647).
Forde, Sermon (1616), p. 75.
Gainsford, Glory of England (1618), p. 35.
Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis (1653), pp. 546–7.
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© 2004 Gerald MacLean
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MacLean, G.M. (2004). Epilogue: What About the Women, Then?. In: The Rise of Oriental Travel. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511767_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511767_21
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