Women travelers in Egypt in the nineteenth century saw aspects of the country unseen by their male counterparts, as they spent time both in the harems of Cairo and with the women they met along the Nile. Some of them, like Sarah Belzoni and Sophia Poole, spoke Arabic. Others wrote engagingly of their experiences as observers of an exotic culture, with special access to some places no man could ever go. From Eliza Fay’s description of arriving in Egypt in 1779 to Rosemary Mahoney’s daring trip down the Nile in a rowboat in 2006, this lively collection of writing by women travelers includes Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Isabella Bird, Norma Lorimer, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, and Lucie Duff Gordon.
Women Travelers on the Nile
An Anthology of Travel Writing through the Centuries
Edited by
Deborah Manley
15 September 2016
160 pp.
24 b/w illus.
12X16cm
ISBN 9789774167874
For sale worldwide
$18.95
Also available by this author

Traveling through Sinai
From the Fourth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah Manley Sahar Abdel-Hakim
$24.95
Buy Now

Women Travelers in Egypt
From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah Manley
$19.95
Buy Now
Traveling through Sinai
From the Fourth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah ManleySahar Abdel-Hakim
Sinai has long attracted travelers to its ancient caravan routes and haunting landscapes, and visitors have frequently left written accounts of their experiences. In this wide-ranging anthology, Deborah Manley and Sahar Abdel- Hakim have collected dozens of accounts and observations from travelers who have written about Sinai, its people, its sights, and its historical and biblical landmarks. Starting with Egeria, a fourth-century Christian who relates her visit to Mt. Sinai and the Burning Bush, Traveling through Sinai offers a diverse collection of voices over the centuries. Among themare the German friar Felix Fabri, who visited in 1492, and nineteenth-century antiquarian William Flinders Petrie, giving his impressions of the Bedouins of the peninsula. French novelist Alexandre Dumas writes of meeting two monks in the desert carrying a letter signed by Napoleon, while others describe crossing the canal at Suez, the ancient inscriptions of Wadi Mukattab, and the harrowing experiences of desert travel.
...read more
13 April 2009
Paperback
272 pp.16 b/w illus.
15X23cm
$24.95
Women Travelers in Egypt
From the Eighteenth to the Twenty-first Century
Edited by Deborah ManleyUntil late in the nineteenth century, few guidebooks acknowledged the presence of women as travelers—although women had been traveling around the world for centuries. Women’s accounts of their journeys, distinct from those of male travelers, began to appear more frequently in the early nineteenth century, and Egypt was a popular destination. Women had more time to watch and describe; they were more dependent on the Egyptian staff; they spent time both in the harems of Cairo and with the women they met along the Nile. Some of them, like Sarah Belzoni, Sophia Poole, and Ellen Chennells, spoke Arabic. Others wrote engagingly of their experiences as observers of an exotic culture, with special access to some places no man could ever go. From Eliza Fay’s description of arriving in Egypt in 1779 to Rosemary Mahoney’s daring trip down the Nile in a rowboat in 2006, this lively collection of writing by over forty women travelers includes Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Isabella Bird, Winifred Blackman, Norma Lorimer, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Amelia Edwards, and Lucie Duff Gordon.
...read more
15 March 15
Paperback
256 pp.20 b/w illus.
15X23cm
$19.95
Related products

Egypt and the Nile
Through Writers’ Eyes
Edited by Deborah Manley Sahar Abdel-Hakim
$24.95
Buy Now
Egypt and the Nile
Through Writers’ Eyes
Edited by Deborah ManleySahar Abdel-Hakim
No land on earth has been so comprehensively observed as Egypt, which was attracting awestruck travelers back in the days of Herodotus and Julius Caesar. This rich and varied collection brings the diversity and the continuity of Egypt together to give a picture of this country, its many places, its long history, and its people: the pharoahs, sultans, pilgrims to Sinai, Crusaders, and Napoleon, followed by the Grand Tourists of the eighteenth century and those less grand with Thomas Cook in the nineteenth. The range of voices gathered here is dazzling: an ancient myth from a papyrus next to Naguib Mahfouz’s account of Alexandria, Florence Nightingale describing Abu Simbel side by side with Ahdaf Soueif’s description of Sinai. A description of medieval Cairo by Ibn Jubayr walks hand in hand with one of the modern city by the Egyptian thinker Taha Hussein. Lucie Duff-Gordon sails up the Nile, Edward Lane crawls through a sand-filled temple, and Isambard Kingdom Brunel struggles up the cataract above Aswan.
...read more
Paperback
244 pp.15X23cm
$24.95

An Istanbul Anthology
Travel Writing through the Centuries
Edited by Kaya Genç
$18.95
Buy Now
An Istanbul Anthology
Travel Writing through the Centuries
Edited by Kaya GençFor centuries following its reestablishment as Constantinople in AD 330, Istanbul served as the capital of three great empires: Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman. The city’s maze-like streets and high balconies, its steep alleys, flower gardens, and forested hillsides remain soaked in the vestiges of that imperial past, and it is to that past and to Istanbul’s unearthly moods and waters that so many writers and diarists journeyed in search of escape, knowledge, happiness, or sheer wonderment. An Istanbul Anthology takes us on a nostalgic journey through the city with travelers’ accounts of the sights, smells, and sounds of Istanbul’s bazaars and coffeehouses, its grand palaces and gardens, crumbling buildings, and ancient churches and mosques, and the waters that so haunt and define it. With writers such as Gustave Flaubert, Pierre Loti, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and André Gide, we discover and rediscover the many delights of this great city of antiquity, meeting point of East and West, and gateway to peoples and civilizations. About the series: The elegant, pocket-sized volumes in the AUC Press Anthology series feature the writings and observations of travel writers and diarists through the centuries. Vivid and evocative travelers’ accounts of some of the world’s great cities and regions are enhanced by the exquisite vintage design in small hardback format that make the books ideal gift books as well as perfect travel companions. Designed on cream paper stock and beautifully illustrated with line drawings and archival photographs.
...read more
30 October 2015
Hardbound
160 pp.24 b/w illus.
12X16cm
$18.95

Cairo Inside Out
Trevor Naylor Photographs by Doriana Dimitrova
$29.95
Buy Now
Cairo Inside Out
Trevor NaylorPhotographs byDoriana Dimitrova
Cairo is a city of splendor and spectacle, long celebrated as much for its warmth and bustling street life as for the legacy of its tumultuous past. Yet for the countless visitors who fall under its spell, the prolonged din of its crowds and traffic can seem overwhelming at times, tempting them out of the city’s open spaces into its shadow light, the cooler, quieter interiors of restaurants, homes, hotels, and terraces. Cairo Inside Out evokes the light and moods of this great metropolis with stunning photographs shot from the city’s indoor havens. We observe it through and from nostalgic haunts, such as Café Riche and the Windsor Hotel, and look out onto its great sights—the Nile, the Red Pyramid at Dahshur, Ibn Tulun mosque—from the most intimate urban interiors, homes, and watersides. For those who may have lived in Cairo, this is a reminder of a city that moves and yet remains wonderfully unchanged. For visitors and residents, this evocative collection, an unabashed homage to Cairo’s persistent color and allure, will inspire them to visit those places once more.
...read more
15 February 2017
Hardbound
148 pp.150 color photographs
21X21cm
$29.95

High above Cairo and the Pyramids
Marcello Bertinetti Foreword by Omar Sharif
$19.95
Buy Now
High above Cairo and the Pyramids
Marcello BertinettiForeword byOmar Sharif
Photographed from the sky, Egypt shows the best of itself. The course of the Nile, which cuts the desert in two from north to south, and the enormous Delta provide glorious, lush vegetation sliced by a deep blue band. The white sails that slide over its waters and the spectacular monuments that line its banks, the human ants’ nest of Cairo, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, palm groves and fertile fields, rocky mountains, coral seas, and the ever-changing waves of the dunes in the desert: all of Egypt’s magical panoramas and incomparable light are offered here in this series of five spectacular new books, together constituting the greatest collection of aerial views of the country ever made.
...read more
Hardbound
128 pp.color photographs
22.5X15cm
$19.95