A prolific travel writer, novelist, and collector of tales, Julia Pardoe ranks with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu as one of the most knowledgeable and influential English interpreters of Turkish life; she is also credited with shaping the generally positive view of Hungary held by nineteenth-century English readers. Although twentieth-century readers know little about her work, Pardoe's narrative gift and grace of style secured a wide popularity for her writings in her own day.

Julia Sophia H. Pardoe was the second daughter of Maj. Thomas Pardoe, an English officer who served at the Battle of Waterloo, and his wife Elizabeth. Although 1806 is commonly thought to have been the year of her birth, baptismal records from Saint John parish in Beverley, Yorkshire, her birthplace, confirm that Pardoe was baptized on 4 December 1804. Pardoe did not write an autobiography, but an unsigned memoir attached to the 1887 edition of her book The Court...