Synopses & Reviews
Founded by Alexander the Great over 2,300 years ago, Alexandria has belonged both to the Mediterranean and to Egypt, a luxuriant out-planting of Europe on the coast of Africa, but also a city of the East-the fabled cosmopolitan town that fascinated travelers, writers, and poets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where French and Arabic, Italian and Greek were spoken in the cafés and on the streets.
In the pages of An Alexandrian Anthology, we follow the delight of travelers discovering the strangeness of the city and its variety and pleasures. Most of all they are haunted by the city's resplendent past-the famous Library, the temple built by Cleopatra for Antony, the great Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the world, of which only traces remain-we follow our travelers here too as they voyage through an immense ghost city of the imagination.
About the Author
Michael Haag is a writer and photographer based in London. He has photographed and written
Alexandria Illustrated (AUC Press, 2004) and
Cairo Illustrated (AUC Press, 2006), and he is the author of
Alexandria: City of Memory and
Vintage Alexandria: Photographs of the City, 1860-1960 (AUC Press, 2008).
Table of Contents
Includes writings by: Plutarch, Dio of Prusa, William Lithgow, Richard Pococke, James Bruce, Eliza Faye, Vivant Denon, Chateaubriand, Henry Salt, John Carne, Sarah Haight, Jean-Francois Champollion, Reverend A C Smith, Samuel Bevan, Catherine Grey, Harriet Martineau, Dr R R Madden, Robert Curzon, Sophia Lane Poole, W M Thackeray, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain, Frederick Goodall, E L Butcher, R Talbot Kelly, Evaristo Breccia, Douglas Sladen, Ronald Storrs, Mabel Caillard, Archduke Ludwig Salvator, Baedeker, E M Forster, Constantine Cavafy, Gladys Milvain, Jasper Brinton, John Brinton, Josie Brinton, Count Patrice de Zogheb, Robin Fedden, John Cromer, Noel Coward, Gwyn Williams, Lawrence Durrell, Theodore Stephanides, Major C S Jarvis, and Naguib Mahfouz.