Critics assume that Mary Louisa Whately's writing is strictly religious, because she was first and foremost an Anglican missionary who worked in Egypt for nearly thirty years and promoted a Christian agenda throughout her life. Without funding or assistance from any church she opened a school for Muslim girls in one of the poorest sections of Cairo, and eventually she opened a school for boys when she acquired such assistance. She later added to these achievements the founding of a medical mission and a school for children from various religious and ethnic groups. Her limited fame has thus been as a missionary and a religious writer.

Nevertheless, her travel writing is noteworthy. Unlike many nineteenth-century writers who write about Egypt by describing monuments, museums, or quaint trips on the Nile, Whately lived and worked among the poor of Cairo, and her perspective on the daily lives and habits...