Frances Isabella Duberly

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Standard Name: Duberly, Frances Isabella
Birth Name: Frances Isabella Locke
Nickname: Fanny
Pseudonym: One who has shared the fortunes of War
FID was a letter-writer and diarist of considerable talent, who reached print in both these forms when she was the only officer's wife to remain with the British army throughout the Crimean war. Her letters in their full form vividly narrate her personal experiences and frustrations; those which were carried anonymously by newspapers blew the whistle on incompetence and criminal negligence in military high places. Her published journal from the Crimea and to a lesser extent her later journal from India (which rank both as travel writing and as military history) combine these themes with those of the horrors of war and the persistence through it all of the human spirit: sometimes comic, occasionally proto-feminist, often satirical.
Black-and-white photo of Frances Isabella Duberly on a horse in front of her husaband Captain Henry Duberly during the Crimean War, 1855.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Mary Anne Barker
George Barker served in the army with dash and distinction. He was twice promoted during periods of military action: he became a colonel during the Crimean War, and a brigadier-general as well as a Knight...
Family and Intimate relationships Margaret Bingham, Countess Lucan
MBCL 's later descendants in the male line did not do her much credit. Her grandson the third Earl was a particularly harsh and cruel landlord during the Great Famine in Ireland. He commanded the...
Literary responses Julia Kavanagh
But Frances Isabella Duberly , spending a hot and disease-ridden summer with the British army in the Crimea and desperate for something clever
Duberly, Frances Isabella. Mrs Duberly’s War. Journals and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6. Kelly, ChristineEditor , Oxford University Press, 2007.
208
to read, found that this novel was as good as a...
Literary responses Charlotte Yonge
It was praised in the Athenæum, and was the last book read by Lord Raglan before his death in the Crimea the year after its publication.
Hayter, Alethea. Charlotte Yonge. Northcote House, 1996.
1
Frances Isabella Duberly , who read it...
Textual Features Ménie Muriel Dowie
The book opens with a lighthearted account of gardens in Ermyngard's neighbourhood, introducing the characters of the Admiral and his wife, the Countess, for whom Ermyngard works. If you heard us gathered round the tea-table...

Timeline

September 1854
The British landed in Crimea, unopposed by the Russians they had come to make war with. They went on to lay siege to Sebastopol that October and to win important victories at Balaklava (25...
17 October 1854
This was the day, according to Frances Isabella Duberly , that after weeks of preparation culminating in continuous firing, the siege of Sebastopol (in the Crimean war) began in earnest.
30 March 1856
The Treaty of Paris was signed by Austria, Britain, Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey, bringing an end to the Crimean War.