Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope

Adventurous and unconventional, Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839) left England to travel to the east in the early nineteenth century. This three-volume work, first published in 1846, was written by her physician Charles Meryon (1783–1877), who travelled with her for seven years before returning to England to complete his medical studies.

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The adventurous and unconventional Lady Hester Stanhope (1776–1839) set off to travel to the East in the early nineteenth century. She had been hostess to her uncle, British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, and after his death she received a government pension and decided to leave England. Her personal physician Charles Meryon (1783–1877) wrote this three-volume memoir of their travels, first published in 1846. She had a reputation as an eccentric, but thought of herself as the 'Queen of the desert' and indeed achieved considerable influence in the places she travelled to. Eventually she settled in the Lebanon, where she lived out the remainder of her life. Volume 2 begins in Damascus, and includes Lady Hester's dangerous trip to Palmyra, where she had been advised it would be impossible for a woman to go. It also includes accounts of plague in Syria, and of Bedouin life.