Gertrude Bell

GERTRUDE MARGARET LOWTHIAN BELL was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist whose works include Amurath to Amurath, The Desert and the Sown and Persian Pictures.

Bell studied history at Oxford University and developed expertise in Persian and Arabic. Her translation of selected poems from the Divan of Hafiz, completed in 1897, is regarded by many scholars as among the most faithful renderings of the Persian poet in the English language.

Extensive travels through Mesopotamia, Greater Syria, Asia Minor, and Arabia made Bell one of the most influential policy-makers of the early twentieth century. She played a key role in the foundation of the modern state of Iraq.

Bell died in Baghdad in 1926.

Gertrude Bell’s books are published by SkyLight Paths, an imprint of Turner Publishing.

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