'Letters from Egypt' Summary

The first volume of Lady Duff-Gordon’s ‘Letters from Egypt’ was published by Macmillan and Co. in May 1865, with a preface by her mother, Sarah Austin, who edited them, and who had felt obliged to omit much that might have given offence and made Lady Duff- Gordon’s life uncomfortable in Egypt. This book is the best known and most interesting of her productions. In 1875 a volume containing the ‘Last Letters from Egypt,’ to which were added ‘Letters from the Cape,’ reprinted from ‘Vacation Tourists’ (1864), with a memoir of Lady Duff- Gordon by her daughter Janet Ross was published by Macmillan and Co. A second edition appeared in 1876. In 1902 a revised edition was published by R. Brimley Johnson with a memoir of Lady Duff- Gordon by her daughter Janet Ross and a new introduction by George Meredith. This had the letters as they were written, omitting only the purely family matter which her daughter deemed as of no interest to the public.