author
Ella Sykes
1863–1939
A vivid travel writer with a taste for difficult journeys, she wrote from firsthand experience in Persia and Central Asia at a time when very few British women traveled so widely. Her books blend curiosity, sharp observation, and a strong sense of adventure.
1 Audiobook
Through deserts and oases of central Asia
by Ella Sykes, Sir Percy Sykes
About the author
Born in Devon in 1863, Ella Constance Sykes was a British traveller and writer best remembered for her journeys in Persia and nearby regions. She studied at St Margaret's Hall, Oxford, and later joined her brother, the diplomat and soldier Percy Molesworth Sykes, in Persia in the 1890s.
Travel became the center of her writing life. She accompanied expeditions, visited remote areas, and turned those experiences into popular travel books, including Through Persia on a Side-Saddle and, with her brother, Through Deserts and Oases of Central Asia. Her work is valued for its lively descriptions of places, people, and everyday life, as well as for the unusual perspective she brought as a woman traveler of her era.
Sykes also remained active in learned circles: she served as secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1920 to 1926. She died in London in 1939, leaving behind a body of travel writing that still offers a memorable window into the late Victorian and early 20th-century Middle East and Central Asia.