ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the private expression of diaries and letters and how these become part of a public world or performance and concentrates on a period of more than 100 years from 1717 and focuses on one writer. It reads some diary entries and letters of women writers closely to explore writing and reading, making and seeing, private and public. For instance, Lady Mary Pierrepont Wortley Montagu's letters are full of insights on these matters. There women writers and others are at a pivotal point in the making and seeing of modern texts, and their ideas of writing and reading, words and the world are important for notions of private and public, of life and art. Montagu is carried away with her circumstances, her host and Arabic love poetry. Her host and she find their bond in books and Arabic literature.
