How Favourable towards Turkey are the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu?
In the ODNB entry for Elizabeth Craven, written by Katherine Turner, we find the assertion that the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu written in the early 18th century, Letters of Lady M--y W-----y M--------e Written During Her Travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, offer a "favourable" account of Turkey, unlike Craven's later travelogue A Journey Through the Crimea to Constantinople, published in 1789. Turner's essay "From Classical to Imperial: Changing Visions of Turkey in the Eighteenth Century" in Stephen H. Clarke, ed, Travel Writing and Empire (Zed books, 1999), also states that she offers an "attractive vision of Turkey" and that her letters are "highly favourable". The essay presents Craven's travelogue as the antithesis of Montagu's, and insists that Craven is far more critical. The opinion that Montagu is favourable towards the Turkish empire is undoubtedly meant to be a favourable judgement in itself, i