When English travel writer Lucie Duff Gordon stood in her home atop Luxor Temple in 1864, she could see the Libyan mountains beyond the west bank of the River Nile through her window. She enjoyed the light on her face and the sound of camels lowing, donkeys barking, and dogs barking below her. She was in Egypt’s sweltering desert convalescing from tuberculosis symptoms, and she missed her family, back home in London. She resided in the French House, or Maison de France, which was constructed in the vicinity in 1815 by a military garrison.
She adored her so-called “Theban palace” and used its balcony to write her family letters nearly every day.
A year later, these letters from Egypt were published as a book, providing vivid details of her time there. At a time when most women writers created fiction, the book distinguished out as a social and cultural commentary by vividly describing Egyptian politics, religious practices, and Duff Gordon’s interactions with her Egyptian neighbors. Duff Gordon’s solo trip and living in Egypt as a British woman soon became an inspiration to other female travelers.
A little over ten years later, novelist Amelia Edwards traveled to Egypt and wrote the best-selling travelogue A Thousand Miles up the Nile after being inspired by Lucie Duff Gordon’s adventures.
