Synopses & Reviews
M. Edith Durham is best known for her classic travel books about the Balkans. However, she was also a passionate, articulate, and well-informed commentator on the twists and turns of Balkan politics and the machinations of the Great Powers. The pieces in this collection of her writings from the early half of the twentieth century remind us of the many connections between Britain and the Balkans over recent centuries - of Tennyson, Disraeli, Lord Fitzmaurice, Aubrey Herbert, and Margaret Hasluck. With its wide geographical sweep, the book offers a fair picture of the Balkans in the early twentieth century: Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia are all represented - their dangers and wonders, ugly brutality and startling beauty, history, custom, geography, and politics. The anthology offers vivid pictures of Balkan locations which will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in modern Balkan history.
About the Author
Mary Edith Durham (1863 - 1944) was a British traveller, artist and writer who became famous for her anthropological accounts of life in Albania in the early 20th century.
Robert Elsie is a writer, translator, interpreter and specialist in Albanian studies.
Bejtullah Destani is Director of the Centre for Albanian Studies.
Elizabeth Gowing works with the Ethnological Museum in Pristina, Kosovo and on other projects to stimulate travel to this beautiful and little-known part of Europe. She is the author of Edith and I: On the Trail of an Edwardian Traveller in Kosovo.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Elizabeth Gowing * The Blaze in the Balkans * My Golden Sisters: a Macedonian Picture * Balkan Sketches - What use to make a fuss? * Balkan Sketches - Life is Cheap * As Others See It: a Sketch in Old Servia * Albanian and Montenegrin Folklore * Hil * The Soul of the War * Travels in Trueland: an Ecclesiastical Episode * Ritual nudity in Europe * The Serbs As Seen in Their National Songs * Because of the Berlin Congress: a True Tale, Dedicated to the Drawers of Frontiers * King Nikola of Montenegro * Albania: Oldest and Quaintest of Balkan Peoples * A Bird Tradition in the West of the Balkan Peninsula * Head-hunting in the Balkans * The Balkans as a Danger Point * Tribes of Northern Albania * A Very Free Press * The Making of a Saint * Albania