Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Anne Finch

Abstract:Archival traces of the manuscript culture in which Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, composed their work can yield information available nowhere else about their literary and personal connections. Evidence of Finch's and Montagu's personal and literary links—their socioliterary intercourse (a term I borrow from Arthur Marotti)—lies in the manuscripts preserved in Montagu's papers at Sandon Hall, Staffordshire. This evidence establishes not only that Montagu and Finch probably knew each other but also that they certainly participated in a manuscript network that gave rise to specific cases of literary influence. This analysis of material-textual evidence, intertextual phenomena, and the biographical links so characteristic of manuscript culture aims to augment our understanding of Montagu and Finch in the interstices of biographical and literary-textual questions.