Letters Writ By A Turkish Spy - Authorship and Publication

Authorship and Publication

It is agreed that the first volume of this work was written by Giovanni Paolo Marana (1642-1693), a Genoese political refugee to the French court of Louis XIV. The first volume (102 letters) was published in several parts between 1684 and 1686 in both Italian and in a French translation. They were translated by William Bradshaw into English in 1687 under the supervision of Robert Midgley who owned the copyright of the work. The remaining seven volumes appeared first in English between 1691 and 1694, prefaced with a letter claiming that they were translated from a discovered Italian manuscript. A French edition of the last seven volumes (with the first) was published in 1696-7 and asserting that it was a translation from the English. The eight volumes contain 644 letters.

There has long been a controversy as to the authorship of the volumes subsequent to Marana's first. They have been attributed to many writers, most notably Robert Midgley and William Bradshaw who produced the English translation. However, given the similarities between the letters, and the stylistic coherence of the whole series, the likeliest author is Marana himself. Marana may have had difficulty in getting the later volumes published in France and turned to England to secure their continuing appearance.

The work was popular throughout the 18th century and went through fifteen complete editions by 1801. Daniel Defoe was attracted to the deist rationalist sympathies of the purported spy; his Continuation of Turkish Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy in Paris (1718) extended the narrator's account from 1687 to 1693.