Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Thousand Miles up the Nile
Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards (1831–1892)
Read by Sibella Denton · 75 chapters · 16 h 46
About the book
In the winter of 1873 Amelia Edwards set off up the Nile on a hired dahabeah, a houseboat with sails, in the company of a friend and a small crew. What she found was a land of temples half-buried in sand, painted tombs, bustling riverbank villages and a sky that seemed to change colour by the hour. She looked, listened and drew, and her account is part travel diary, part history lesson, part cultural study, and always good company. Edwards writes with wit and appetite, whether she is describing a donkey ride at dawn, an argument over the price of a boat, or the immense carved faces at Abu Simbel. Along the way she begins to fall for Egypt, and the book hints at the passion that would shape the rest of her life. Seventy-five short chapters carry you from Cairo to the Second Cataract. Come aboard and take your place on the deck.
Introduction
Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards was born in 1831 and died in 1892. She started out as a novelist and journalist, and her work in those fields was successful, but she is remembered above all for what came after her journey to Egypt. The trip described in this book transformed her into a determined student of ancient Egypt and a tireless advocate for the preservation of its monuments.
A Thousand Miles up the Nile was published in 1877 and quickly became a best-seller, reprinted in 1888 in Britain and abroad. At the time, few women travelled so far from home, and fewer still wrote about the experience with such authority. Edwards combines vivid description of daily life on the river with careful observation of ruins, inscriptions and the work of earlier scholars, and she illustrated the original edition herself.
The book is long and leisurely, structured in short chapters that follow the journey stage by stage. You will meet crew members, local officials, fellow travellers and, of course, the great monuments of the Nile valley, as they looked to a Victorian visitor nearly a century and a half ago. Some views of the people and history reflect the period, but the sense of discovery is infectious.
This LibriVox recording has seventy-five chapters and runs for nearly seventeen hours, read by Sibella Denton. It makes an excellent companion for anyone who loves travel writing, archaeology or simply a good armchair journey. For anyone planning to visit Egypt, or simply dreaming of it, the book still delights. Edwards later helped to found the Egypt Exploration Fund, and the enthusiasm that led her there is on every page.
Public domain
Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards died in 1892: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text