Mrs Duberly's War: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6: Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-1856 - Tapa dura

Christine Kelly has produced an excellent work, intermingling Fanny's journal with extracts from her letters, both to the press in England and to her friends and relatives at home. (Tricia Summer, Tribune Books)

The scholarly introduction and notes add considerably to the reader's enjoyment. (The Tablet)

Christine Kelly has skilfully interpolated Fanny's letters...so that they form a vivid, more outspoken counterpoint to the main narrative. (Mark Bosteridge, TLS)

This one should not be missed...[Duberly] knew she had a book in her that would keep her name alive. And she was right. (John Carey, Sunday Times (Culture))

A vivid, irresistible first-hand account of the Crimean War. (Sunday Times)

Christine Kelly has written an excellent introduction, and her edition at last gives Fanny Duberly the recognition she deserves. s

Mrs Duberly's journal is one of the most vivid eye-witness accounts we have of the Crimean War. Fanny Duberly, then aged 25, accompanied her husband to the Crimea in 1854, and remained there until the end of the fighting, the only officer's wife to remain throughout the entire campaign. She survived the severe winter of 1854-55, witnessed the battle of Balaklava and the charge of the Light Brigade, and rode through the ruins of Sebastopol. Spirited and courageous, she was known by sight to British and French soldiers across the battlefields, regarded often with enthusiasm and sometimes with disapproval. Witty and beautiful, she enjoyed flirtatious friendships with many of the most important men of the campaign. Her Journal kept during the Russian War was published in 1855 and caused a sensation. Although widely praised as the 'new heroine for the Crimea', Fanny was also censured, ridiculed, and even parodied in Punch. She had stepped into a man's world, and written about it in a way that seemed to some at the front an invasion of privacy and to others at home an abandonment of gentility. A best-seller at the time, the Journal was not reprinted after its second edition of 1856, and this is the first edition since that time.