Book
French
ID: <
10670/1.lr7u0y>
Abstract
Elizabeth Craven born Berkeley, from the English nobility, partitioned to the East in 1785. The following year, she published her travel correspondence, addressed to Charles-Alexandre, the margrave of Brandeburg-Anspach-Bayreuth, which she later married. This route, which allowed him to discover the Ottoman Empire and Greece, but also Eastern Europe, was undertaken for various reasons, including the desire to discover the unknown: “I will see courses and people that few women have seen,” she wrote from Bologna on 15 November 1785. Contact with foreign civilisations and populations is not always surprising: Lady Craven’s letters sometimes express admiration but also prejudices and, quite frequently, disregard for the countries visited. However, these letters testify to the very high independence of Lady Craven in relation to his time, despite the legal and ideological provisions that maintained women in a state of subordination. This journey, and the correspondence it has generated, has a transgressive political dimension.