Alexander Pope gives Lady Montagu terrible investment advice

Alexander Pope (English, 1688–1744)

Letter to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

August 22, [1720]

In August 1720, near the height of the South Sea Bubble, the English poet Alexander Pope wrote this letter to his friend Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, urging her to “Buy of South Sea Stock...which will certainly rise.” Like many female bubble investors, Montagu was more circumspect than her male counterparts, and she seems not to have heeded Pope’s bad advice. In fact, she herself warned another male friend not to invest, consequently suffering public humiliation when he rejected her guidance but nevertheless blamed her for his loss. Pope would later recall the scandalous incident in his poem The Dunciad, mocking a “hapless Monsieur” who complained “Of Wrongs from Duchesses and Lady Mary’s.”