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Edith Durham

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Edith Durham
Edith Durham in the 1880s
Born
Mary Edith Durham

8 December 1863
London, United Kingdom
Died15 November 1944(1944-11-15) (aged 80)
Academic work
Main interestsAlbanian history, Culture
Notable worksHigh Albania
InfluencedRobert Elsie

Mary Edith Durham, FRAI (8 December 1863 – 15 November 1944) was a British artist, anthropologist and writer who is best known for her anthropological accounts of life in Albania in the early 20th century. Her advocacy on behalf of the Albanian cause and her Albanophilia gained her the devotion of many Albanians who consider her a national heroine.

Early life

Durham was the eldest of nine children. Her father, Arthur Edward Durham, was a distinguished London surgeon. She attended Bedford College (1878–1882), followed by the Royal Academy of Arts, to train as an artist. She exhibited widely and contributed a number of detailed drawings to the amphibia and reptiles volume of the Cambridge Natural History (published 1899).[1]

Balkan expeditions

Valley of Gusinje, High Albania, 1909

After the death of her father, Durham took on the responsibilities of caring for her sick mother for several years. It proved an exhausting experience. When she was 37, her doctor recommended that she should undertake a foreign vacation to recuperate.[2] She took a trip by sea down the coast of Dalmatia, travelling from Trieste to Kotor and then overland to Cetinje, the capital of Montenegro. It gave her a taste for southern Balkan life, which she retained for the rest of her life. On her return to London she studied the Serbian language and the history of the region.[2]

Durham travelled extensively in the Balkans in order to write her first book Through the Lands of the Serbs published in London in 1904. In 1908 she wrote High Albania after travelling through the Albanian highlands, from Montenegro to Shkodra.[2] Over the next twenty years she focused particularly on Albania, which then was one of the most isolated and undeveloped areas of Europe. She worked in a variety of relief organisations, painted and wrote, and she also collected folklore and folk art. In 1911-13 she helped Albanian refugees in Montenegro where she raised funds for medicine, food and helped wounded soldiers.[3]

She contributed frequently to the journal Man and became a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Her writings, however, were to earn her particular fame. She wrote seven books on Balkan affairs. High Albania (1909) is the best known and is still regarded as the pre-eminent guide to the customs and the society of northern Albania's highlands.

Controversy

After being a fervent admirer of the Serbs which saw her write Through the Lands of the Serbs, followed by an anti-Austrian and pro-Yugoslav phase, Durham came to identify closely with the Albanian cause and championed the unity and independence of the Albanian people. She was strongly criticised by the advocates of a Yugoslav state, who supported the incorporation of the Albanian-populated region of Kosovo into Yugoslavia. According to American scholars Thomas Cushman and Stjepan Meštrović, her eccentric personality and her incessant lobbying activity made her despised by the British Foreign Office.[4] Becoming increasingly anti-Serb following the First World War,[4] she denounced what she termed "Serb vermin" for having "not created a Jugoslavia but have carried out their original aim of making Great Serbia.... Far from being liberated the bulk of people live under a far harsher rule than before".[5]

Other, British intellectuals who were more pro-Serb sharply criticised her views. Author Rebecca West included Durham in her description of the sort of traveller who came back "with a pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer" (Durham sued West over this)[6] and then went on to say: "The Bulgarians, as preferred by some, and the Albanians, as championed by others, strongly resembled Sir Joshua Reynolds's picture of the Infant Samuel".[7][8] R.W. Seton-Watson commented that "the fact is that while always denouncing 'Balkan mentality', she is herself exactly what she means by the word".[6][note 1]

For their part, however, the Albanians held Durham in high regard and dubbed her "Mbretëresha e Malësoreve" (the "Queen of the Highlanders)". She was given an embroidered waistcoat by the government to thank her for lobbying the British government on behalf of the occupied city of Korçë.[9] She was well received in the Albanian Highlands and passed unharmed despite being a lone female traveller.

When she died in 1944, she received high praise for her work from the exiled King Zog, who wrote: "She gave us her heart and she won the ear of our mountaineers". She is still regarded as something of a national heroine; in 2004, Albanian President Alfred Moisiu described her as "one of the most distinguished personalities of the Albanian world during the last century"[10] She was also awarded a medal from King Zog for her support.

Collections

Much of Durham's work was donated to academic collections following her death. Her papers are held by the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, her diaries are in the Bankfield Museum, Halifax along with her collections of Balkan costume and jewellery given in 1935. Further gifts of mostly Balkan artefacts were given to the British Museum in 1914 and to the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and the Horniman Museum, London.[11] Some items from her textile collection were displayed in a 2020 exhibition.[9]

Notes

  1. ^ The Durham–Seton-Watson correspondence is housed in the Seton-Walson papers at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London.

References

  1. ^ Harry Hodgkinson (2004). "Durham, (Mary) Edith (1863–1944)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37379. Retrieved 9 April 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ^ a b c Elsie, R. (2010). Historical Dictionary of Kosovo. Historical Dictionaries of Europe. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7483-1.
  3. ^ Calderdale Museums. "Edith Durham". Calderdale Museums. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
  4. ^ a b Thomas Cushman; Stjepan Mestrovic (1 October 1996). This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide in Bosnia. NYU Press. p. 251 248. ISBN 978-0-8147-7224-9. Retrieved 30 August 2013. ...Durham turned increasingly anti-Serbian...
  5. ^ Durham, Edith M. (2008). Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle. Book Jungle. ISBN 978-1605973579.
  6. ^ a b King, Charles (4 August 2000). "Queen of the Highlanders: Edith Durham in 'the land of the living past'". Times Literary Supplement: 13–14.
  7. ^ West, Rebecca (1941). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: The Record for a Journey Through Yugoslavia in 1937. Vol. I. London: Macmillan. p. 22.
  8. ^ "The Infant Samuel". Tate. Retrieved 9 April 2014.
  9. ^ a b Judah, Hettie (31 January 2020). "A tangled, teasing show: Unbound: Visionary Women Collecting Textiles – review". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 June 2020.
  10. ^ Presidenti i Republikës së Shqiperisë Archived 27 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine at www.president.al
  11. ^ "Miss Mary Edith Durham (Biographical details)". The British Museum. Retrieved 9 April 2014.

Bibliography

Library resources about
Edith Durham
By Edith Durham
  • Through the Lands of the Serb (1904)
  • The burden of the Balkans (1905)
  • High Albania (1909)
  • The struggle for Scutari (1914)
  • Twenty Years of Balkan Tangle (1920)
  • The Sarajevo Crime (1925)
  • Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans (1928)
  • Albania and the Albanians: selected articles and letters, 1903–1944, ed. by Bejtullah Destani (I.B. Tauris, 2001)
  • The Blaze in the Balkans; selected writings, 1903–1941 edited by Robert Elsie and Bejtullah D Destani (I.B. Tauris, 2014)

Further reading

  • Mary Edith Durham (2016). Nella Terra del Passato Vivente. La scoperta dell'Albania nell'Europa del primo Novecento. Introduzione, traduzione, note e appendice di Olimpia Gargano. Lecce: Besa. 2016
  • Elizabeth Gowing (2013). Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo. Elbow Publishing.
  • Kastriot Frashëri (2004). Edith Durham : një zonjë e madhe për Shqipërinë. Geer.
  • Laura Emily Start (1939). The Durham Collection of Garments and Embroideries from Albania and Jugoslavia. Halifax Corporation
  • Gill Trethowan (1996). Queen of the Mountains: The Balkan Adventures of Edith Durham. British Council.
  • Christian Medawar (1995). Mary Edith Durham and the Balkans, 1900–1914. McGill University.
  • John Hodgson (2000). "Edith Durham, traveller and publicist". In John B. Allcock, Antonia Young (ed.). Black Lambs & Grey Falcons: Women Travellers in the Balkans. Berghahn Books. pp. 9–31. ISBN 9781571817440.
  • Marcus Tanner (2014) Albania's Mountain Queen I.B. Tauris ISBN 9781780768199
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