The Turkish Embassy Letters by Mary Wortley Montagu

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

In 1716 Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to Istanbul. She was there as the wife of the British ambassador along with a sizeable entourage to represent Britain’s interests in Turkey. This position that she held meant that she could get to meet people in positions that normal travellers would not be able to entertain, such as empresses and sultans.

This book is a collection of her letters that were sent to a variety of people and were subsequently collected together to make this book up. I don’t know the name of the people that were the recipients of these letters, but I can guess with the number of nobility scattered amongst the names that these were the great and the good of the society of the time.

The thing that I liked most about the letters is the incredible detail of the places and people that she encounters on the way there and in court life. There are details of her seeing whirling dervishes for the first time, the description of a dress that was dripping in gems and diamonds as well as the mundane and the most recent gossip she is gathering and passing on to her friends.

I thought that this was a well-written insight into life at the beginning of the 1700s. She is an astute observer of life in the court as well as shining a light on the almost unknown lives of Turkish women at the time. Her views on life are refreshing too, given the time this was written, though she does carry the deeply held views of similar members of her class in society of the time. The afterword by the late great Dervla Murphy adds context to just who this lady was. Well worth reading, not just for its historical importance, but as a unique travel book of its time.