Egypt and Its Monuments msx READING Copy

New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891. First Edition. Hardcover. Reading Copy/no. Octavo, [23.75cm/9.5inches], full blue-embossed ice-blue cloth sans dust jacket, pp. 325, indexed. Illustrated with a plethoria of drawings and photogravures . Please feel free to inquire as to particulars and/or additional photographs. ... Edwards, accompanied by Lucy Renshaw, toured Egypt in the winter of 1873–1874, experiencing a fascination with the land and its cultures, ancient and modern. Journeying southwards from Cairo in a hired dahabiyeh (manned houseboat), the two women visited Philae and ultimately reached Abu Simbel, where they remained for six weeks. Another party member was the English painter Andrew McCallum, who discovered a sanctuary that came to bear his name for some time afterwards. Their boat joined a flotilla with another female English traveller, Marianne Brocklehurst, also travelling with a female companion. Brocklehurst and Edwards remained friends and Brocklehurst later supported her Egypt Exploration Fund. Edwards wrote a successful, self-illustrated description of her Nile voyage entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile (1877).[19][20] Her travels in Egypt made her aware of increasing threats to ancient monuments from tourism and modern development. She set out to hinder these through public awareness and scientific endeavour, becoming an advocate for research and preservation of them. In 1882, she co-founded the Egypt Exploration Fund with Reginald Stuart Poole, Curator of the Department of Coins and Medals at the British Museum. Edwards became joint Honorary Secretary of the Fund until her death.

To advance the Fund's work, Edwards largely abandoned other writing in favour of Egyptology. She contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica,[21] to the American supplement of that and to the Standard Dictionary. In addition, Edwards took on an strenuous lecture tour in the United States in 1889–1890. The lectures later appeared as Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers.[2