Lady Edmund Hornby: Constantinople during the Crimean War.London 1863. First edition,large in Quarto,contemporary fine leather over boards with very few wear, EX LIBRIS OF SEFIK ATABEY with his characteristic etiquette in front past down,text clean and bright,complete 500p., and 4 fine colored lithographs,overall a lovely copy with fine provenance In 1863, Lady Edmund Hornby (born Emilia Bithynia Maceroni) published a collection of letters that remains one of the most vivid and intimate accounts of life in the Ottoman capital during the era of the Crimean War.Lady Hornby was the wife of Sir Edmund Hornby, the British Commissioner to the Ottoman Empire. Because of her husband's high-ranking position, she had backstage access to the highest levels of both Ottoman and European society of Constantinople of the 1850s.. However, her tone is more observational and less political She provides meticulous descriptions of the jewelry, the food, and the conversations of the Levantine elite women,Greeks,Ottomans and Armenians. She captures the surreal nature of Constantinople during the Crimean War,a city filled with British and French soldiers, naval officers, traders and diplomats, all living in a state of high tension and luxury while the siege of Sevastopol raged across the sea. She visited often the hospitals in Scutari and mentions the work of Florence Nightingale, Her letters are filled with the Western eye for the picturesque,describing the Bosphorus, the Sultan's processions,, the Greek and Armenian population and the Great Fire of Pera.A fine copy from the prestigious Atabey collection