Travels of Lady Hester Stanhope, Volume 2 (of 3)

In the early nineteenth century, one Englishwoman discarded the expectations of her class and gender to become something unprecedented: a lone adventurer traversing the Middle East on her own terms. Lady Hester Stanhope, niece of Prime Minister William Pitt, had already survived shipwreck near Rhodes and made her way through Greece, Egypt, and Palestine before arriving in Damascus. Volume Two finds her in that ancient city during Ramadan, dressed in men's clothing, refusing the veil, and practicing medicine among locals who have come to trust her formidable will. She treats the sick, negotiates with powerful figures, and schemes to reach the legendary ruins of Palmyra, the ancient Roman desert city that has consumed her ambitions. The obstacles are formidable: cultural expectations, safety concerns, the ever-present risks of foreign travel in a region in flux. Yet Hester persists, forging connections with sheikhs and merchants, demonstrating that a woman of iron will could carve out influence in places where none was expected. Written by her personal physician Charles Meryon, this memoir captures a singular figure at the height of her powers, a woman who would eventually settle in Lebanon and die alone but who, for one glorious stretch, commanded the desert as its queen.