Cairo
Cairo became a publishing and travel hub in the nineteenth century, and two Englishwomen wrote the best accounts of it. Amelia Edwards sailed up the Nile in 1873 and turned the journey into a book that helped create scientific Egyptology; Lucie Duff Gordon lived in Luxor for years and described the country from inside a household rather than from a hotel.
The American University in Cairo's special collections hold travel accounts, maps and photographs of the city and the river. Egypt's own national archives and the grandes bibliothèques are the other essential starting point, and both require planning rather than a casual visit.
A library to check
- AUC Rare Books and Special Collections Library — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Cairo
- A Thousand Miles up the Nile — Amelia Edwards, 1877. The best Victorian account of the Nile, written by a woman who turned tourism into scholarship.
- Letters from Egypt — Lucie Duff Gordon, 1865. Letters that turn a health trip into one of the most sympathetic travel books of the century.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.