author
Edward Wortley Montagu
1713–1776
A restless eighteenth-century traveler and writer, he turned a life of escapes, adventures, and long journeys across Europe and the Ottoman world into stories that still feel lively and unusual. His reputation has long been tied to his famous parents, but his own career was full of drama, curiosity, and hard-won experience.
1 Audiobook
Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain
by Edward Wortley Montagu
About the author
Born on May 15, 1713, Edward Wortley Montagu was the son of Edward Wortley Montagu and the celebrated letter-writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. As a child he traveled with his parents to the Ottoman Empire and became known as the first native of Britain to be inoculated against smallpox, an episode often mentioned in accounts of his early life.
His youth was famously unruly. He ran away from Westminster School, traveled widely, and later studied at Leiden, developing a strong interest in languages and travel. Over the years he built a reputation as an eccentric, learned wanderer who moved through parts of Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Levant, experiences that fed both his writing and the legends that gathered around him.
Montagu is remembered as an English traveler and author whose life seemed almost novelistic in itself. He wrote about politics and history as well as his own experiences, and later readers were especially drawn to the autobiographical tradition attached to his name. He died in Padua on April 29, 1776.