author

M. E. Hume-Griffith

An English observer with rare access to women’s private lives in Persia and Turkish Arabia, she wrote with the perspective of someone who lived there for years rather than passing through. Her best-known book blends travel writing, social observation, and everyday detail from the early 1900s.

2 Audiobooks

Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia

Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia

by A. Hume-Griffith, M. E. Hume-Griffith

Achter den Sluier in Perzië en Turksch Arabië

Achter den Sluier in Perzië en Turksch Arabië

by M. E. Hume-Griffith

About the author

Mary Hume-Griffith, published as M. E. Hume-Griffith, is known for Behind the Veil in Persia and Turkish Arabia (1909). Contemporary catalog and book records identify it as an account of an Englishwoman’s eight years living in Persia and the Turkish province of Mosul, where she accompanied her husband, Dr. Albert Hume-Griffith, a medical missionary.

What makes her work stand out is the access she had to domestic spaces and conversations that many outside visitors never saw. In the book’s own preface, she explains that her years in the region allowed her to become close to women living "behind the veil," and she set out to describe that inner world for readers at home.

Very little biographical information about her seems to be widely documented beyond this book and its context, so the clearest picture of her comes through her writing itself: observant, curious, and deeply shaped by daily life in Persia and Turkish Arabia during the years 1900 to 1908.