Lucie Duff-Gordon had been admired as a girl for her beauty and her intelligence, and as a woman she wrote some of the most vivid letters ever sent from Egypt. Suffering from tuberculosis, she left England for the warm climate of the Nile in the 1860s, settled in Luxor and lived among her neighbours, learning their language and customs and writing home regularly. Her letters to her family describe the river, the villages, the festivals and the hardships of the people, and she writes with humour, warmth and a sharp political eye. This recording gathers the whole collection, from the introduction and the memoir to the individual letters, in 124 short parts. One LibriVox volunteer reads them all in about thirteen hours, which makes them ideal for listening in small instalments.
Introduction
Lucie Duff-Gordon, who lived from 1821 to 1869, was an English writer and translator of works from German and French. As a girl she was noted for her beauty and her intelligence, and as an author she is most famous for this collection of letters from Egypt. She suffered from tuberculosis and went to Egypt for the sake of her health, and she stayed there for several years, until close to the end of her life.
The letters first appeared in book form in 1865, and the edition recorded here is dated 1902, with a memoir written by her daughter, Janet Ross. The letters belong to travel writing and to the genre of the letter, and they offer an unusually close view of life in nineteenth-century Egypt. Duff-Gordon did not travel as a tourist but lived among local people, and her letters record conversations, local customs, daily work and the burdens imposed by officials. They are sympathetic to the people she meets, though, like any writer of her time, she brings her own outlook to what she sees.
The collection begins with an introduction and a memoir, followed by letters ordered by date, starting in 1862. The first of them is addressed to Mrs Austin. Each letter is a self-contained scene or sketch, so the book can be sampled at will.
The recording consists of 124 parts, all read by one LibriVox volunteer, and lasts about thirteen hours. Today it is worth hearing for its lively voice, its historical interest and its window on a place and period seen from within.
Public domain
Lucie Duff-Gordon died in 1869: 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.
