The romance of Isabel Lady Burton

The narrative, combining the subject’s own recollections with a biographer’s account, traces a wife’s life alongside her husband during foreign postings and travels. It recounts domestic routines and social duties, vividly depicting a Damascus household with gardens, stables and a menagerie, then follows journeys across desert routes to ancient sites and visits to Jerusalem, Trieste, Bombay and India. Episodes cover an official recall, public controversies over a translated work, the couple’s later years and the author’s widowhood, weaving personal anecdote, travel observation and portraits of the people and places encountered.