A LIFE OF LETTERS’ | Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 18th Century Traveller and Diarist with Susan Scollay

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) was a traveller, prolific letter writer and lively diarist. She was one of the first European women to record her impressions of Islamic gardens and the luxuries of palace life when she accompanied her diplomat husband to the Ottoman Turkish court in Istanbul during the so-called ‘Tulip Era’ of Ahmet III. She also introduced to British medicine the method for inoculation against smallpox she observed amongst the Ottomans.

SUSAN SCOLLAY is an independent art historian and curator specialising in Islamic art and culture and in historic textiles. She is a contributing editor to HALI, the prestigious, London-based journal of carpet, textile and Islamic art. She was guest curator of Fluid Borders: Ways of Seeing Oriental Rugs held at The Johnston Collection in 2010. Her recent curated exhibition, Love and Devotion: From Persia and Beyond was shown at the State Library of Victoria and the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, in 2012-13. In 2013 she was elected in London as a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. ‘

Charles Jervas (circa 1675 – 1739), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, after 1716, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin