What is it about?
This is the story of forgotten independent traveller Dr Elizabeth Macbean Ross, who wrote about her time living with Persia's tribal elites in her study A Lady Doctor in Bakhtiari Land (1921). The article looks at the ways in which Ross challenged the unthinkingly romantic portrayal of Persia through her own writing - and how her story was subsequently taken out of her hands and co-opted to fit the orientalist mould she had done much to break.
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Why is it important?
Dr Ross' story shows that Western women were living and working independently in the Middle East, on terms of equality with its inhabitants, long before we imagine that they were. Ross' work complicates the idea that self-critical travel writing is a "new" phenomenon, and challenges the likes of Robert Byron and Vita Sackville-West's domination of 20th century travel writing about the Middle East.
Perspectives
I came across Dr Ross' book whilst researching the Bakhtiari tribe of Southwest Persia, and was grateful for its unique depth and relatively balanced critique. Rescuing her story from obscurity is a political act for two reasons: first, it highlights a narrative of co-existence between East and West that transcends the coloniser/coloniser model and exposes its inadequacies; second, it allows Ross room once again to represent her own story, having been reduced to an uncomfortable romantic adventurer/damsel in distress character by an English national newspaper. To recover Ross is to recover lost female voices.
Dr Barbara Cooke
University of Leicester
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The Adventures of Miss Ross: Interventions into, and the Tenacity of, Romantic Travel Writing in Southwest Persia, Journeys, January 2015, Berghahn Journals,
DOI: 10.3167/jys.2015.160104.
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