 Title page of the first edition | |
| Author | Lady Mary Wortley Montagu |
|---|---|
Publication date | 1763 |
The Turkish Embassy Letters [lower-alpha 1] are a letter collection of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's reflections on her travels through the Ottoman Empire between 1716 and 1718. [1] She collected and revised them throughout her life, circulating the manuscripts among friends, and they were first published in 1763 after her death. [2]
Mary and Edward Wortley Montagu, both of wealthy and aristocratic families, married in 1712. Mary played an active role in furthering Edward's ambitious political career. In 1716, Edward was appointed as the Ambassador Extraordinary to the Court of Turkey, which he and Mary expected to be a twenty-year position abroad. One of Edward Montagu's tasks was to offer British mediation to mitigate the brewing war between Turkey and Austria, which he attempted in Vienna, Austria, though he had little impact. [3]
The Montagus travelled extensively in Europe before proceeding to Turkey. They visited Helvoetsluys, Rotterdam, Den Hague, Nijmegen, Cologne, Nuremberg, Ratisbon, Prague, Brunswick, and Hanover, in addition to their five-month stay in Vienna. They then travelled along the Danube to Constantinople, where Edward Montagu took up his post. He was recalled back to England after only two years, and the couple travelled through Italy and France on their return. [3]
The Turkish Embassy Letters consist of fifty-eight letters addressed to friends and relatives from various places on their journey. Twenty-two letters describe their travels in Europe on the way to Turkey, twenty-seven were written from Turkey in Adrianople or Constantinople, and nine are from their return journey. Although the majority of the letters were written in Europe, Montagu's descriptions of Turkey garnered the most attention, especially her descriptions of women-only spaces such as baths. [3]
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat, medical pioneer, writer, and poet. Born in 1689, Lady Mary spent her early life in England. In 1712, Lady Mary married Edward Wortley Montagu, who later served as the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. Lady Mary joined her husband on the Ottoman excursion, where she was to spend the next two years of her life. During her time there, Lady Mary wrote extensively on her experience as a woman in Ottoman Constantinople. After her return to England, Lady Mary devoted her attention to the upbringing of her family before dying of cancer in 1762.
Edward Wortley Montagu was an English author and traveller.
George Sandys was an English traveller, colonist, poet, and translator. He was known for his translations of Ovid's Metamorphoses and the Passion of Jesus, as well as his travel narratives of the Eastern Mediterranean region, which formed a substantial contribution to geography and ethnology.
Mary Stuart, Countess of Bute, 1st Baroness Mount Stuart was the wife of British nobleman John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, who served as Prime Minister from 1762 to 1763.
Edward Wortley Montagu was an English coal-owner and politician. He was British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, husband of the writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and father of the writer and traveller Edward Wortley Montagu.
Lady Louisa Stuart was a British writer of the 18th and 19th centuries. Her long life spanned nearly ninety-four years.
Turquerie, or Turquoiserie, was the Turkish fashion in Western Europe from the 16th to 18th centuries for imitating aspects of Ottoman art and culture. Many different Western European countries were fascinated by the exotic and relatively unknown culture of the Ottoman ruling class, which was the center of the Ottoman Empire. This fashionable phenomenon became more popular through trading routes and increased diplomatic relationships between the Ottomans and the European nations, exemplified by the Franco-Ottoman alliance in 1715. Ambassadors and traders often returned home with tales of exotic places and souvenirs of their adventures.
Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 is a travel narrative by the British Romantic author Mary Shelley. Issued in 1844, it is her last published work. Published in two volumes, the text describes two European trips that Mary Shelley took with her son, Percy Florence Shelley, and several of his university friends. Mary Shelley had lived in Italy with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, between 1818 and 1823. For her, Italy was associated with both joy and grief: she had written much while there but she had also lost her husband and two of her children. Thus, although she was anxious to return, the trip was tinged with sorrow. Shelley describes her journey as a pilgrimage, which will help cure her depression.
The Turkish Bath is an oil painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, initially completed between 1852 and 1859, but modified in 1862. The painting depicts a group of nude women at a pool in a harem. It has an erotic style that evokes both the Near East and earlier western styles associated with mythological subject matter. The painting expands on a number of motifs that Ingres had explored in earlier paintings, in particular The Valpinçon Bather (1808) and La Grande odalisque (1814).
Letters from Turkey were a genre of letter collection written by Europeans who had been to Ottoman Empire. Usually, the letters were published with various titles, but they are popularly known as "Letters from Turkey" or "Turkish letters". Below is the summary of these.
The Rev. Prebendary James Dallaway FSA was an English antiquary, topographer, and miscellaneous writer. He is known for his account of Constantinople and the Greek islands, published in 1797; and his county history of the western parts of Sussex, of which he published two volumes in 1815–19.
Charles Maitland was a Scottish surgeon who inoculated people against smallpox.
Edward Browne, FRS was a British physician, and president of the College of Physicians.
Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or other microbe or virus into a person or other organism. It is a method of artificially inducing immunity against various infectious diseases. The term "inoculation" is also used more generally to refer to intentionally depositing microbes into any growth medium, as into a Petri dish used to culture the microbe, or into food ingredients for making cultured foods such as yoghurt and fermented beverages such as beer and wine. This article is primarily about the use of inoculation for producing immunity against infection. Inoculation has been used to eradicate smallpox and to markedly reduce other infectious diseases such as polio. Although the terms "inoculation", "vaccination", and "immunization" are often used interchangeably, there are important differences. Inoculation is the act of implanting a pathogen or microbe into a person or other recipient; vaccination is the act of implanting or giving someone a vaccine specifically; and immunization is the development of disease resistance that results from the immune system's response to a vaccine or natural infection.
Levantinization is a term used in different contexts to describe non-European cultural influences in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire. The term often carries negative connotations. Cornell associate professor Deborah Starr uses the term to describe the fear of change to Israeli culture during the influx of Mizrahi Jews in the 1950s. In other contexts, the term has sometimes been used in an anti-Islamic context for the perceived "cultural contamination" of European values by "degenerate Levantine influences".
The Grand Tour of Europe became increasingly popular among women in the late 18th century and early 19th century. For British upper-class young women travelling Europe was part of formal education as well as a form of entrance into elite society. When published, women’s letters and travel diaries about their experiences provided entertainment and vicarious travel for a less elite audience.
Lambert Wyts or Lambert Wijts was a Flemish courtier, draughtsman and diarist. Born into a prominent family in the County of Flanders he became a courtier in the service of the Habsburg dynasty. In this role, he made three diplomatic trips respectively to Spain, Turkey and the Holy Roman Empire. He kept a diary of his travels which contribute to the understanding of contemporary circumstances in those countries. In particular, his diary regarding his trip to Turkey, with its drawings of events and local people and their dress, is of importance in this regard. In the past he has been mixed up with a contemporary Fleming from Mechelen by the name Lambert de Vos, a trained artist who traveled at the same time to Turkey where he made various drawings of local costumes and sights.
Afife Kadın, was a consort of the Ottoman sultan Mustafa II.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)