Mary Wortley Montagu - England 1720

 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is the most notable English woman writer active circa 1720.

• 

Takeaway: If you want a single, prominent literary figure around 1720, Montagu is the clearest answer — a brilliant letter‑writer, poet, traveler, and early feminist voice whose work and public influence were already well established by that date.

🖋️ Why Montagu fits exactly the 1720 moment

• Active and influential in the 1710s–1720s. She lived in Constantinople from 1716–1718 and wrote the Turkish Embassy Letters, which circulated in manuscript and became famous for their sharp observations of Ottoman life, women’s culture, and politics.

• A major literary presence. Known for witty “town eclogues,” essays, and a wide range of letters in almost every epistolary style.

• Historically significant. She introduced smallpox inoculation to England after observing the practice in Turkey — a cultural and medical intervention that made her widely discussed in the early 18th century.

Montagu is often described as the most colourful Englishwoman of her time, and her writing was already admired and circulated during the 1720s.

Other viable English women writers around 1720

If you want alternatives or a trio for comparison:

• Susanna Centlivre (1669–1723) — The most successful female playwright of the early 18th century; her comedies dominated the stage and were still being performed long after her death. Active through the 1710s–1720s.

• Elizabeth Singer Rowe (1674–1737) — Hugely popular poet and essayist; her Friendship in Death (1728) was widely read and reprinted. A major devotional and epistolary voice.

• Sarah Scott (born 1720/1721) — Not active in 1720 (she was a child), but born then; later became an important novelist of utopian and reformist fiction.

If you want the best single answer:

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is the standout English woman writer circa 1720 — both in literary significance and in cultural impact.