Henrietta Liston's Travels: The Turkish Journals 1812 - 1820

by Henrietta Liston, Patrick Hart (Editor), Valerie Kennedy (Editor)

An original perspective on the early 19th-century Ottoman Empire:

- The first publication of Henrietta Liston’s Turkish journal and associated writings;

- A scholarly edition with extensive critical apparatus introducing an almost entirely unknown manuscript containing a significant, extended work of travel writing;

- Based on archival research in the Liston Papers that sheds new light on the events described in the journal and the period in which it was written, the Listons’ life in Turkey and their circle of diplomats, travellers and writers;

- Makes an important contribution to the recuperation of unpublished women’s travelogues and life writing, and to the study of diplomatic spouses and consorts.

Henrietta Liston’s Turkish journal is a significant yet virtually unknown work of women’s travel writing. As the wife of the British Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Liston had privileged access to the Ottoman elite and diplomatic corps. Her journal reflects on British–Ottoman relations, combining Orientalist perspectives with a human-centred version of the picturesque. It offers astute commentaries on places, people and events – including a plague-ridden Constantinople, a visit to the harem of the Grand Vizier’s deputy, the presentation of ambassadors in the Seraglio and the departure of pilgrims on the hajj.

Genres: Travel

246 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 2020

About the author

Henrietta Liston née Marchant (b. 1752) was a Scottish botanist and wife of the diplomat Robert Liston. She was born in Antigua to a Scottish planter Nathaniel Marchant and his wife Sarah Nanton. She lost her parents when she was eight and moved along with her brothers to her maternal aunt's residence in Glasgow.

She married Robert Liston on 27 February 1796 and the couple arrived in the United States later that year. While in the US, Henrietta Liston visited 16 states, collected botanical specimens and established friendship with George Washington and John Adams, of whom her diaries contain favourable impressions. She and her husband are credited with preparing an early foundation for the long-term "Special Relationship" between the United States and United Kingdom.

The couple left the US in December 1800 and Henrietta later accompanied her husband to Hague, Copenhagen and Istanbul. Their residence Millburn Tower in Ratho was built to the design of architect William Atkinson. It was here that she established her American garden and grew exotic plants from America, Caribbean and the Mediterranean. While the Listons were in Constantinople, William Ramsay McNab of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh took care of her garden.