A Woman in Arabia

Introduction

The phenomenal Gertrude Lowthian Bell came from a family of wealthy British industrialists in the north of England in the mid-nineteenth century. From sheep farmers and blacksmiths they had become the sixth-richest family in Britain. The Bells at their most powerful employed some forty-five thousand workers at their steel and chemical works and mines. They made the steel components, weighing fifty thousand tons, for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the track for hundreds of thousands of miles of railways all over the world. They were intellectuals, Liberal voters, and anti-aristocracy, although they had begun to marry into the nobility. In childhood, Gertrude met the scientists, writers, and statesmen of the day as they visited her grandfather and her father in Yorkshire: men such as Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Robert Louis Stevenson, and William Morris. Even as a child, Gertrude was intimidated by no one, telling a divinity teacher that she "didn't believe a word of it." She began her adult life at twenty, in 1888, by becoming the first woman to gain first-class honors in Modern History at Oxford University. After a life full of adventure and rule-breaking and exploration, she did something of unique importance: she founded a nation, the nation of Iraq.

Her father, Hugh Bell, was married at twenty-three to Mary Shield. A beautiful local girl, she was the daughter of a Newcastle merchant. Gertrude was their first child, born in 1868. Tragically, Mary Bell survived only three weeks after the birth of their second child, Gertrude's brother Maurice.

Hugh became for a time a poignant figure, working six days a week at the Clarence steelworks in Middlesbrough. His sister Ada moved in to run the house and look after the children. Hugh had to share his Sundays with his sister, a wet nurse, and some half-dozen servants. Through the matchmaking of his two sisters, he met and then married Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe. She had been born and

Gertrude Bell (1868 1926) was one of the first women to be made a Commander of the British Empire. Her statesmanship paved the way for the creation of an independent Iraq.

Georgina Howell (editor) wrote the acclaimed biography Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations.

A fascinating read . . . The story that emerges is thought-provoking. . . . Gertrude s legacy makes easy parallels to the present, from world powers trying to determine the political shape of the Middle East to women s struggles to be taken seriously by male colleagues. In A Woman in Arabia, she faces it all with humor, passion, and candor; even a century on, she s a woman worth knowing. NPR.org

[A] well-chosen selection from [the] letters and memoirs [of] one of the most remarkable figures of the late 19th and early 20th century . . . Bell might be regarded as the much happier, female equivalent of T. E. Lawrence, who knew and admired her. The Washington Post

I hope this collection of Bell s prose, more than the upcoming film by Werner Herzog, stirs up controversy about her time as an archaeologist and spy and spearhead of post-WWI British policy in the Middle East, the effects of which can still be felt today. Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire s 10 Must-Read Books for August

Luckily for those of us who are unfamiliar with Gertrude Bell, there comes A Woman in Arabia . . . a collection of Bell in her own words, helpfully annotated. The Daily Beast

Bell s letters . . . are as rich in ethnographic detail as any of the great nineteenth-century European travelogues, but chattier devoid of the heroic rhetoric of T. E. Lawrence s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. . . . [They] capture both her charisma and the intensely social character of her time in the Middle East. Like the State Department cables released by WikiLeaks in recent years, Bell s archive of correspondence is a reminder of the daily disorder obscured by other political documents: maps, treaties, bulletins. The New Yorker

A fascinating glimpse at [Bell s] larger-than-life personality . . . Timely and timeless . . . The genius of this collection is letting Bell tell her story in her own words just as her fiercely independent spirit would have wanted.