Last Letters from Egypt

These vivid and sympathetic descriptions of life in Egypt by a Victorian gentlewoman were first published in 1875.

Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–1869) was a writer who left England because of ill-health. This volume, first published in 1875, contains letters from South Africa and Egypt. As a long-term resident she became well acquainted with the people of Egypt, and is critical of the effects of westernisation.Lucie Duff Gordon (1821–1869) was a translator and travel writer. Forced to leave England in 1851 due to tuberculosis, she went first to South Africa and then to Egypt. Her letters home were published with considerable success. She writes with great feeling about the ordinary life of the Egyptians: her interest in and sympathy with them is clear, and her affection for them led her to criticise the derogatory way in which many western visitors regarded them. This second, posthumous volume (the first, Letters from Egypt, 1863-65, is also reissued in this series) contains not only the letters from the latter half of her time in Egypt, but also her letters from the Cape, and a memoir by her daughter, Janet Ross.