A Thousand Miles Up The Nile

As enthralling as any work of fiction, A Thousand Miles up the Nile is the quintessential Victorian travel book. In 1873, Amelia B. Edwards, an upper-class Victorian spinster, spent the winter visiting the then largely unspoiled splendors of ancient Egypt. An accurate and sympathetic observer, she brings nineteenth-century Egypt to life. A Thousand Miles up the Nile was an instant hit in 1876, and is received with equal enthusiasm by modern readers. Fans of Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody Emerson series will see similarities between the two Amelias. More importantly, A Thousand Miles up the Nile provides a wealth of background information and detail that will increase the reader’s understanding and enjoyment of Peters’ novels. This Norton Creek Press edition of A Thousand Miles up the Nile is a reproduction of the illustrated 1890 edition by Routledge and Sons. Look for more of Edwards’ works from Norton Creek Press.

Miss Blandfords' 'A Thousand Miles Up the Nile ' is one of the classics of the literature of Egypt. Her work as an Egyptologist, and deserved reputation as such, began with the expedition of which it is the narrative. The author has studied her subjects with great care; she has consulted and compared authorities ancient and modern, with much industry; and her examination of the remains she describes was a labor of love and enthusiasm. . . Nor does she confine her attention to art and archaeology. She gives many fresh and lively sketches of the often described life of the dahabecah; of its great events, such as sand-storms and of the natives.

This, the first biography of Amelia Edwards, sets out her work as the founder of the Egypt Exploration Society and writer of A Thousand Miles up the Nile in the context of her previous career as novelist and journalist. It traces her development from a multi-gifted child to an adventurous and unconventional woman and finally to her life as a dedicated and reclusive worker in the cause of exploring and safeguarding the antiquities of Egypt.

From Herodotus's day to the present political upheavals, the steady flow of the Nile has been Egypt's heartbeat. It has shaped its geography, controlled its economy and moulded its civilisation. The same stretch of water which conveyed Pharaonic battleships, Ptolemaic grain ships, Roman troop-carriers and Victorian steamers today carries modern-day tourists past bankside settlements in which rural life – fishing, farming, flooding – continues much as it has for millennia. At this most critical juncture in the country's history, foremost Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson takes us on a journey up the Nile, north from Lake Victoria, from Cataract to Cataract, past the Aswan Dam, to the delta. The country is a palimpsest, every age has left its trace: as we pass the Nilometer on the island of Elephantine which since the days of the Pharaohs has measured the height of Nile floodwaters to predict the following season's agricultural yield and set the parameters for the entire Egyptian economy, the wonders of Giza which bear the scars of assault by nineteenth-century archaeologists and the modern-day unbridled urban expansion of Cairo – and in Egypt's earliest art (prehistoric images of fish-traps carved into cliffs) and the Arab Spring (fought on the bridges of Cairo) – the Nile is our guide to understanding the past and present of this unique, chaotic, vital, conservative yet rapidly changing land.