The Lady Who Brought Pox to the Party 

Smallpox engrafting
Mary Wortley Montagu in Turkish dress.
Memorial to the Rt. Hon. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu erected in Lichfield Cathedral by Henrietta Inge. Lichfield Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Lichfield, Staffordshire, England, one of only three cathedrals in the United Kingdom with three spires (together with Truro Cathedral and St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh), and the only medieval one of the three. On Friday 15 January 2021, while closed to services during the COVID-19 pandemic, Lichfield Cathedral became the first place of worship in England to accommodate the vaccination programme in the United Kingdom.

Her Wikipedia page says she is chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her Turkish Embassy Letters describing her travels to the Ottoman Empire, as wife to the British ambassador to Turkey, which are said to be “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient”. What?

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