On the 200th anniversary of Henrietta Liston's final departure from Turkey, this volume presents for the first time in print the journal she kept of her first journey to Constantinople and of her experiences and further travels while residing there. It begins in March 1812 with her setting forth from London with her husband Robert, who had been called out of retirement to serve for a second time as British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. Sailing from Portsmouth in the forty-four-gun Argo (see Plate 1), the Listons visited militarily and politically strategic locations such as Cádiz, Gibraltar, Palermo and Malta before passing through the Greek islands and mooring near the mouth of the Dardanelles (for a map of their route, see Map 1). Having explored the plains of Troy, they arrived in Constantinople in late June. They would not finally depart again for Britain and permanent retirement for another eight years.

Written during the Napoleonic Wars, at a time of transition between the eighteenth century and the Victorian period, Liston's journal reflects both this critical historical juncture and some of the continuities and changes in travel writing about the Ottoman Empire. It invites comparison with the famous Turkish Embassy letters of Liston's predecessor of a century before, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, also wife to a British ambassador to the Sublime Porte. The experiences Liston documents offer parallels and contrasts with those Montagu described to luminaries such as Alexander Pope and the Princess of Wales. Like Montagu, she writes of witnessing dervishes and of her visits to Ottoman women and the harem; but she also writes of meeting the Grand Admiral of the Ottoman fleet on board his ship, and of ambassadors’ audiences with the Kaimakam (the Deputy Grand Vizier), as well as of fire, plague and assassinations. Moreover, unlike Montagu, she travelled to Turkey by sea rather than by land, and both Liston's time in Constantinople and the extent of her travels around it significantly exceeded Montagu's (see Map 2 for the places Liston visited). Perhaps the most striking difference, however, is in their respective voices. Where Montagu's letters (to which Liston repeatedly refers) are aristocratic, witty and addressed to some of the best-known figures of her time, Liston's journal is phlegmatic, sharp-eyed and seems to have been intended only for the eyes of a few familiar readers.