Gertrude Bell

14 July 1868 - 12 July 1926

GB , who began publishing in the late nineteenth century, became well-known in the early twentieth century as a writer of popular travel narratives. She also wrote books on archeological and political topics, and she was most unusually qualified by experience for political writing and archeology. All of her work concerns the Middle East, especially Syria, Turkey, and present-day Iraq.

Milestones

14 July 1868

GB was born at Washington Hall, Durham, the elder of two children—or, counting her younger half-siblings, the eldest of five.

Goodman, Susan. Gertrude Bell. Berg, 1985.

3, 4

Wallach, Janet. Desert Queen. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1996.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Early 1907

GB published The Desert and the Sown, an account of her travels in Syria in 1905.

Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 174. Gale Research, 1997.

174: 3

12 July 1926

GB died in Baghdad of an overdose of sleeping potion, and was buried the same day with full military honours.

Goodman, Susan. Gertrude Bell. Berg, 1985.

115

Winstone, Harry Victor Frederick. Gertrude Bell. J. Cape, 1978.

259

February 1937

The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell appeared posthumously; the volume includes letters from her childhood through to 1892, before she became a published author.

Bell, Gertrude. The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell. Richmond, ElsaEditor , Ernest Benn, 1937.

Biography

Birth and Family

14 July 1868

GB was born at Washington Hall, Durham, the elder of two children—or, counting her younger half-siblings, the eldest of five.

Goodman, Susan. Gertrude Bell. Berg, 1985.

3, 4

Wallach, Janet. Desert Queen. Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1996.

Matthew, Henry Colin Gray, Brian Harrison, and Lawrence Goldman, editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.