Gertrude Bell : The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914

by Bell, Gertrude Lowthian

• ISBN13: 9780815606727
• ISBN10: 0815606729
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr

Summary

Gertrude Bell's Arabian diaries, published here for the first time, rank as one of the great travel narratives, carrying readers along on a desperate and heroic journey that foreshadows the emergence of the future imperial servant in Baghdad in the l920s.

The Englishwoman Gertrude Bell lived an extraordinary life. Her adventures are the stuff of novels: she rode with bandits; braved desert shamals; was captured by Bedouins; and sojourned in a harem. Called the most powerful woman in the British Empire, she counseled kings and prime ministers.

In this volume of three of her notebooks, Rosemary O'Brien preserves Bell's elegant, vibrant prose, and presents Bell as a brilliant tactician fearlessly confronting her own vulnerability. Her journey to northern Arabia in 1914 earned Bell professional recognition from the Royal Geographical Society, and solidified her reputation as a canny political analyst of Middle Eastern affairs.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	ix
Preface	xi
Acknowledgments	xv
Gertrude Bell en Route	3	(35)
Gertrude Bell's Itinerary, 1913--1914	38	(5)
Doughty-Wylie Diaries	43	(206)
Appendixes:
A. Diaries 1913--1914	137	(108)
B. Ibrahim's Daftar	245	(4)
Glossary	249	(4)
Works Cited	253	(4)
Index	257