A Thousand Miles up the Nile
Amelia Edwards sailed up the Nile in 1873 with a friend, a camera and a serious interest in Egyptology. Her account mixes the discomforts of river travel with careful descriptions of temples, and she drew many of the illustrations herself.
What makes the book unusual is her attitude to the past: she is not merely sightseeing but trying to understand what she is looking at, and she became a founder of the Egypt Exploration Fund as a result. She is also honest about the damage done by earlier travellers. It is a Victorian travel book with a purpose.
Public-domain status
First published in 1877. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Amelia Edwards died in 1892, so this work has been free to republish there since 1963.
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