Gertrude Bell

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Standard Name: Bell, Gertrude
Birth Name: Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell
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.
Black and white photo of Gertrude Bell standing in front of a tent in Iraq, 1941, palm trees in the background. She has a covering on her head to protect her from the sun. She is wearing a jacker, a long skirt, and unsuitable-looking shoes.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Rosita Forbes
An indefatigable name-dropper, RF wrote that the greatest, and most sensible, man she had ever met was Kemal Atatürk ; she then bracketed with him Franklin Delano Roosevelt .
Forbes, Rosita. Gypsy in the Sun. Cassell, 1944.
55-6
In Cairo she was always...
Friends, Associates Rosita Forbes
RF met Gertrude Bell on these travels, and became a strong supporter of King Faisal , who was installed as Hashemite ruler of the new nation of Iraq at a Cairo conference of spring 1921...
Friends, Associates Amabel Williams-Ellis
During Amabel's childhood, visitors to the St Loe Strachey household included the powerful and famous, mostly diplomats, millionaires, politicians.
Williams-Ellis, Amabel. All Stracheys Are Cousins. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1983.
6
She met diplomat Lord Cromer , newspaper proprietor Lord Northcliffe (then Alfred Harmsworth), industrialist Arthur Balfour
Friends, Associates Susan Tweedsmuir
ST 's parents made connections through friendship as remarkable as those made for them by family descent. Her mother was a friend of many writers and intellectuals of both sexes, including Marie Belloc Lowndes ,...
Friends, Associates Freya Stark
Through her association with Jeyes, FS met such literary figures as H. G. Wells and W. B. Yeats . She also campaigned for the Anti-Suffrage League and met key figures in the group, including its...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Robins
ER 's first few years in London brought her into contact with several important literary and theatre figures, including Henry James , Oscar Wilde , actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree , and actress Ellen Terry ...
Intertextuality and Influence E. M. Hull
The years after World War One saw a rise in foreign travel-books by such women adventurers as Gertrude Bell , Freya Stark , Rosita Forbes , and Lady Dorothy Mills .EMH 's desert travel-book...
Intertextuality and Influence Rose Macaulay
This work is unlike Fabled Shore in that it is structured only loosely on geography or chronology. It is more a conceptual work than a guide-book.
Bensen, Alice. Rose Macaulay. Twayne, 1969.
151-2
It ranges geographically from Macao to Paraguay...
Leisure and Society Anne Thackeray Ritchie
Subscribers to the portrait included Gertrude Bell , Arnold Bennett , Rhoda Broughton , Lucy Clifford , Henry James , Elizabeth Robins , the Tennyson s, Josephine Ward , and Margaret Woods .
Gérin, Winifred. Anne Thackeray Ritchie: A Biography. Oxford University Press, 1981.
272-3
Ritchie, Anne Thackeray, and Hester Helen Thackeray Fuller. Letters of Anne Thackeray Ritchie. J. Murray, 1924.
285-7
Leisure and Society Carola Oman
In a letter to the Times in 1962, CO described a bookcase in her writing-room which held the works she described as All the Winners. For a writer of fairly conservative views and strong...
Textual Features Diana Athill
She opens on things she would like to do which age makes inappropriate or impossible: acquiring a puppy, or watch a tree-fern grow to maturity. (A postscript records that the tree-fern, discouragingly tiny when it...
Textual Features Dorothy Wellesley
The title reflects a dominant metaphor in the narrative. DW identifies strongly here with her own sex, particularly with such travellers as Freya Stark , Gertrude Bell , or Ella Maillart : in her Epilogue...
Textual Features Jan Morris
The expedition undertaken ran through the mountains of Muscat and elsewhere in Oman on the borders of Saudi Arabia and the present day United Arab Emirates. It was led by Sultan Said bin Taimur
Textual Production Freya Stark
In 1946, her Western Arabian photos were used by the Naval Intelligence Division of the Admiralty in London in the Middle East Intelligence Handbooks 1943-1946. Other non-academic contributors to the Handbooks included Harry St John Philby
Textual Production Jan Morris
Morris wrote on a wide range of topics for the Times, contributing The Comic Strip in American Life and The Plays of Eugene O'Neill to a collection of articles jointly titled The American Press...

Timeline

21 July 1908: The Women's National Anti-Suffrage League...

National or international item

21 July 1908

The Women's National Anti-Suffrage League was established.
Norquay, Glenda. Voices and Votes: A Literary Anthology of the Women’s Suffrage Campaign. Manchester University Press, 1995.
xv-xvi
Tickner, Lisa. The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffrage Campaign, 1907-1914. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
99

March 1917: British troops invading Ottoman territory,...

National or international item

March 1917

British troops invading Ottoman territory, having suffered defeat at Kut the previous spring, succeeded in capturing Baghdad.
Glass, Charles. “Iraq Must Go!”. London Review of Books, 3 Oct. 2002, pp. 12-13.
12

25 April 1920: The Supreme Allied Council, supported by...

National or international item

25 April 1920

The Supreme Allied Council , supported by the League of Nations , gave Britain the Mandate to administer Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq, formed from the three Turkish provinces of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra) and for Palestine...

: A conference held at Cairo installed the...

National or international item

Spring 1921

A conference held at Cairo installed the Hashemite Faisal I as king of Iraq, then a new entity under British Mandate conferred by the League of Nations .
Buchan, James. “Miss Bell’s fateful lines in the sand”. Guardian Weekly, Vol.
168
, No. 13, 20–26 Mar. 2003, p. 20.
20

18 June 1922-19 July 1924: The Kurds, seeking autonomy, rose in rebellion...

National or international item

18 June 1922-19 July 1924

The Kurds, seeking autonomy, rose in rebellion against the British Mandate over Iraq, their homeland.
Keller, Helen, editor. The Dictionary of Dates. Macmillan, 1934, 2 vols.
I: 850-1
Langer, William L., editor. An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged. 4th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
1095
Buchan, James. “Miss Bell’s fateful lines in the sand”. Guardian Weekly, Vol.
168
, No. 13, 20–26 Mar. 2003, p. 20.
20

Texts

Bell, Gertrude. Amurath to Amurath. W. Heinemann, 1911.
Bell, Gertrude. Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914. Editor O’Brien, Rosemary, Syracuse University Press, 2000.
Bell, Gertrude. Notes on a Journey through Cilicia and Lycaonia. 1906.
Bell, Gertrude. Palace and Mosque at Ukhaidir. Clarendon Press, 1914.
Bell, Gertrude et al. Persian Pictures. Ernest Benn, 1928.
Hafiz,. Poems from the Divan of Hafiz. Translator Bell, Gertrude, Heinemann, 1897.
Ross, E. Denison et al. “Preface”. Teachings of Hafiz, translated by. Gertrude Bell and Gertrude Bell, Octagon, 1979, pp. 19-33.
Graham-Brown, Sarah, and Gertrude Bell. “Preface”. The Desert and the Sown, Virago, 1985, p. v - xviii.
Bell, Gertrude. Review of the Civil Administration of Mesopotamia. His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1920.
Bell, Gertrude. Safar Nameh—Persian Pictures. R. Bentley and Son, 1894.
Bell, Gertrude. The Arab of Mesopotamia. Published by the Superintendant, Government Press, 1917.
Bell, Gertrude, and Sir Kinahan Cornwallis. The Arab War. Golden Cockerel Press, 1940.
Bell, Gertrude. The Desert and the Sown. W. Heinemann, 1907.
Bell, Gertrude. The Earlier Letters of Gertrude Bell. Editor Richmond, Elsa, Ernest Benn, 1937.
Bell, Gertrude. The Letters of Gertrude Bell. Editor Bell, Florence, E. Benn, 2 vols.
Bell, Gertrude, and Sir William Mitchell Ramsay. The Thousand and One Churches. Hodder and Stoughton, 1909.