Ethel Smyth was a prolific author, including volumes of autobiographical writing, and was herself the subject of biography. After a brief introduction to the family and social context of the letters, this volume therefore can focus on the relationship and exchange of ideas between 'ES' and Elizabeth Williamson, the grand-daughter of Ethel's eldest sister Mary Hunter. In part thanks to her great-aunt, Elizabeth's Edwardian childhood led not to marriage but to a degree, work at the University of London Observatory, and the freedom to continue her studies in classical Greek. In their correspondence the two women talk about books, theatre, travel, current affairs and personal philosophies, as well as friendships and family life with all their problems and rivalries and, of course, dogs. All against the backdrop of an interleaving aristocratic, political, academic, literary and business world. The letters themselves, clearly valued by Elizabeth, almost perished three times - including once after the editor of the collection had herself inherited them. This volume is a selection, with the bulk of the collection now in the Beinecke Library at Yale.

The origins of 'Aladdin' continue to fascinate scholars and readers of the tales. The story is believed to have first been written in French, by Antoine Galland, having been told to him in Paris in 1709 by Hanna Diyab - the author of this travel memoir. Written some five decades after this encounter, 'The Life and Times of Hanna Diyab' is part autobiography and part storytelling, a fascinating record of experiences, cultural observations, international relations, medicine, and hearsay. It traces a journey across land and sea from the author's home in Aleppo - through early eighteenth-century Lebanon, Jabal Druze, Cyprus, Egypt, Libya, Tunis, Livorno, Genoa and Marseille - to Paris in the time of Louis XIV; and the author's return to Aleppo across the 'lands of the East', now Turkey. The Foreword explains how this important translation into English came about and the Introduction provides background to some of the features of the memoir, including the Maronite Christian community of the period, the consular system of the Republics of Venice and Genoa, the role of Ottoman ambassadors, and of the French merchant, naturalist and traveller, Paul Lucas. Notes at the end of the book also help the non-specialist reader, and there are two bibliographies.