Lady Mary Wortley Montague, Her Life and Letters (1689-1762)

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu refused to be quiet. Born into an age that expected elegant silence from women of her station, she instead became one of the most brilliant letter-writers in the English language, a sharp-eyed chronicler of courts and scandals, and an unlikely medical pioneer. This early 20th-century biography traces her remarkable journey from childhood prodigy to celebrated correspondent, from exile in Turkey where she witnessed smallpox inoculation firsthand, to her triumphant return to England where she fought the medical establishment to save lives. Melville captures her fierce intellectual pride, her disdain for the limitations placed on women, and the delicious wit that made her lettersRequired reading for anyone curious about the women history tried to forget.