SOURCE: Preface to Persian Pictures by Gertrude Bell, Boni and Liveright, 1928, pp. 5-11.

In the following preface to Persian Pictures, Ross discusses Bell's early impressions of Persia and includes a lengthy excerpt from a letter Bell wrote to her cousin Horace Marshall.

The letters of Gertrude Lowthian Bell are so fresh in the public mind, and seem so clearly destined to become a classic, that there is little need in this place for biographical details. It will suffice to say that she was born on July 14, 1868, at Washington Hall, Durham, then the residence of her grandfather, the late Sir Lowthian Bell. In 1885 she entered Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and in 1887 took a brilliant First in History. During her student days in Oxford, when she indulged in games with no less zeal than in her studies, she seems to have caught the fever of the Orient, so that when...