ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's politics aligned her with those Whig families in power; and second that the sending, compilation and publication of the embassy letters can all be read as attempted interventions in the Whig cause. There are at least several immediate historical reasons, though, why the party political dimension of the Turkish Embassy Letters might so far have been downplayed. In 1758 Montagu was in Venice, where she became embroiled in a row with the English Resident there, John Murray. This Old Whig heritage of which Montagu was a part was, however, to return to haunt the Walpolian Whigs. Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters fall into line with these ideas on the side of the Walpolian Whigs. Montagu's appreciative descriptions of the Turkish women at the baths in Sophia, of Fatima, and of the Sultana Hafise have been much discussed in terms of Orientalist discourse.
