accomplishment, Lady Montagu--though familiar to students of Englightenment England's literature--has been essentially forgotten by the world of science. The Dictionary of Scientific Biography, for example, has no entry for her. Some references on the history of smallpox treatment fail to mention her entirely, while others refer only briefly to her pioneering work. We will return at the conclusion of this essay to consider possible reasons for her undeserved obscurity. In order to evaluate those reasons, however, we must first consider the circumstances under which she had her contribution, and how the combination of class and gender influenced her career.
From an early age, Lady Mary Wortley proved herself to be a strong-willed and independent individual. Her mother died when she was a child, and her father, the Duke of Kingston, took little interest in his children, but Mary educated herself in his library. In her teens she began a correspondence with Anne Wortley Montagu, granddaughter of the first Earl of Sandwich. The latter's letters were in fact ghostwritten by her brother Edward, and when Anne died in 1709, Mary and Edward conti
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