Twenty-nine years in the Levant (1810-1839)

Lady Hester Stanhope is often depicted as a shallow 19th-century socialite, who took part in the Orientalist movement and travelled to Lebanon where she lived an eccentric life and died.Presenting the English translation of fifteen letters from her never previously published Arabic correspondence, this book intends to show that Lady Hester was in reality an influential and respected figure in the Levant.A witty, well-travelled and very experienced woman, whose political skills were trained by her uncle William Pitt the younger, Lady Hester not only created around her a tightly knit network of local friends and political allies who regarded her as an equal in spite of her gender, but she also harmoniously blended into Lebanon, whose local manners she adopted, and which she ultimately preferred to her own native country's way of life; a country where she never returned.