author
Robert Curzon
1810–1873
A Victorian traveler and diplomat, he is best remembered for vivid journeys through the monasteries of the Levant and for bringing important manuscripts back to Britain. His writing mixes curiosity, humor, and a collector’s eye for rare books and unusual places.
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Visits to Monasteries in the Levant
by Robert Curzon
About the author
Born in London on March 16, 1810, Robert Curzon was an English traveler, diplomat, and author who later became the 14th Baron Zouche. He was educated at Charterhouse and Christ Church, Oxford, and developed a lasting interest in the eastern Mediterranean and the Christian monasteries of the Near East.
Curzon is best known for Visits to Monasteries in the Levant, a lively travel book drawn from journeys he made in the 1830s. During those travels he acquired several important biblical and historical manuscripts from Eastern Orthodox monasteries, a part of his legacy that made him notable not just as a writer but also as a manuscript collector.
He succeeded to the barony in 1870 and died on August 2, 1873. Today he is remembered as one of those nineteenth-century writers whose firsthand travel narratives opened distant religious and scholarly worlds to British readers.