Tenderness, Tittle-tattle and Truth in Mother-Daughter Letters: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wortley Montagu Stuart, Countess of Bute, and Lady Louisa Stuart

Abstract

The correspondence of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and her daughter and granddaughter is one of the most extensive collections of English mother-daughter letters for the period. Through it one can see the nature of their political and social activity and their sense and construction of their own social identities and responsibilities. But what is most distinct about the Montagu-Bute-Stuart sequence is their reflection on what mother-daughter letters meant. The letters exchanged between Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) and her daughter, Mary Wortley Montagu Stuart, Countess of Bute (1718-94), and Bute and her daughter (and Montagu's granddaughter), Lady Louisa Stuart (1757-1851) provide a rich resource for considering how letters exchanged between mothers and daughters can foster a dialogue concerning the place of women in society.1[1] See Mary Wortley Montagu (1965-67) Complete Letters, ed. Robert Halsband, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press), hereafter CL, and for the Bute-Stuart letters, Mrs Godfrey [Alice G.] Clark (Ed.) (1895-8) Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, 3 vols (Edinburg: Douglas).