author
Jehan d' Ivray
1861–1940
A French writer who spent much of her life in Egypt, she turned close observation into novels, travel writing, and essays that explored Egyptian life and the lives of women. Her work offers a vivid window into the meeting of French and Egyptian worlds in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
2 Audiobooks
L'Égypte éternelle
by Jehan d' Ivray
Au cœur du Harem
by Jehan d' Ivray
About the author
Born Jeanne Puech in Bessèges, France, on April 17, 1861, she wrote under the pen name Jehan d'Ivray. She later became known as Madame Jeanne Fahmy Bey, and she died in Vichy on September 9, 1940.
She lived in Egypt for many years after marrying an Egyptian doctor, Selim Fahmy Bey. That long experience shaped much of her writing: she became especially known for books about Egypt, along with fiction and essays that paid close attention to women's lives and social change.
Her books include novels, historical works, and reflective studies such as Bonaparte et l'Égypte, La Rose du Fayoum, Souvenirs d'une odalisque, and L'aventure saint-simonienne et les femmes. Read now, her work feels valuable not just as literature, but as a record of a writer who moved between cultures and tried to make that world legible to her readers.