A Travel Writer Reconsidered: Recovering Mary Morgan’s Mary, the Osier-Peeler

Abstract

Recently discovered is the singly-extant 1798 quarto chapbook, Mary, the Osier-Peeler, a Simple but True Story, written by Mary Morgan, best known for her 1795 travel narrative, A Tour to Milford Haven, in the Year 1791. The inaccessibility of the osier poem has shaped the scholarly understanding of Morgan as solely a travel writer, disregarding the intertextuality of her published oeuvre and its post-publication circulation. This essay revisits the historiography of Mary Morgan and demonstrates her embeddedness in local networks, coterie relationships with notables such as Bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu, and introduces evidence of a broader, international audience to better contextualize Morgan’s readership and circulation.