This thesis argues that a comprehensive understanding of the representation of the Ottoman Empire in eighteenth-century English women’s travel writing requires a new perspective through an analysis of cultural and political changes in the eighteenth century from Enlightenment to Romanticism.

This thesis studies Aesthetics and Politics in Eighteenth Century Women’s Travel Writings to Ottoman Empire. In this essay, through representative extracts of her epistolary narrative, I will try to show how Lady Montagu systematically debunked the stereotyped image of the Orient that her male predecessors had instrumentally propagated in early modern England. For this reason, in the well-known 'Embassy Letters' she posted to relatives and friends during her Turkish sojourn, she discredited the authors of those travel accounts, who failed to tell the truth but conveyed what was partial and erroneous, and continually emphasised the authenticity of her experience. Living for almost two years in the Ottoman Empire offered the English gentlewoman the possibility not only to appreciate the customs and mores of the local people, but also to realize how false and groundless were many of the ideas she had heard about the Turks. Here, the Whig politician Edward had been appointed ambassador extraordinary of George I to Sultan Ahmet III and representative of the Levant Company to the Sublime Porte. In the summer of 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu undertook a long journey across Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean to accompany her husband to Constantinople.

Montagu turkish embassy letters