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"Gertrude had written of the fatalistic nomad attitude to this life in The Desert and the Sown." - Gertrude Bell, Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations (2010)
"In her book 'Syria—The Desert and the Sown,' Ms. Bell wrote some of the most stirring and passionate lines...made her escape at 24 when she wen to Persia." -The Age (Melbourne), Dec. 8, 1989
"The Englishwoman who tells it has brains, courage, sympathy, culture, learning,...working knowledge of Arabic...round the campfire, in the hair tent...we sit with them and hear their discussions, their stories and their complaints." -New York Tribune, March 3, 1907
"Gertrude Bell, a knowledgeable British observer, wrote in 1907 that Syria is merely a geographical term corresponding to no national sentiment in the breasts of the inhabitants." - Greater Syria, The History of an Ambition (1992)

How an elite British woman fare during multiple sojourns with warring tribal nomads of the Syrian desert in her Victorian era travels?

To sit about a Syrian campfire at night and listen to those mystic Easterners tell tales among themselves, to stand with them as they dance and chant their wild battle songs on the eve of a tribal war, to talk with guides, with sheiks, with the discreet officials of despotism in their own tongue, is not the usual privilege of a traveler.

Because Its author did these things and incorporated them into her book, "Syria, the Desert and the Sown," by Gertrude Bell, is not the ordinary book of travel.

Of what they said to her she made a book, stringing their words, as she herself says, upon the thread of the road. These bits of insight into a race are dramatic, fascinating, strange, weird, full of the lure and mystery and poetry of the East. They are brief and suggestive like only half told tales. They take one into the soul of the people as no description can. Seriously and with insight she has written to show what these people of the desert are.

In introducing her book, Bell writes:

"To those bred under an elaborate social order few such moments of exhilaration can come as that which stands at the threshold of wild travel. The gates of the enclosed garden are thrown open, the chain at the entrance of the sanctuary is lowered, with a wary glance to right and left you step forth, and, behold! the immeasurable world. The world of adventure and of enterprise, dark with hurrying storms, glittering in raw sunlight, an unanswered question and an unanswerable doubt hidden in the fold of every hill. Into it you must go alone, separated from the troops of friends."

About the author:

Gertrude Bell was born in July 1868 and died July 12, 1926. She was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan as well as in Iraq.

She played a major role in establishing and helping administer the modern state of Iraq, using her unique perspective from her travels and relations with tribal leaders throughout the Middle East. During her lifetime she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials and exerted an immense amount of power. She has been described as "one of the few representatives of His Majesty's Government remembered by the Arabs with anything resembling affection"