Agnes Ethel Conway and the Balkans

The aim of this paper is to highlight the major features of Agnes Ethel Conway’s short travelogue A Ride Through the Balkans: On Classic Ground with a Camera (1917). Conway (later Mrs Horsfield) travelled through the Balkans in 1914, and the account of the adventurous journey was published three years later. In the introductory lines, written by her father, Sir Martin Conway, the privilege of travelling to lands “fair and far away” is pointed out, as well as the fact that “the world is wide and […] worth seeing” not only for men but for young women as well, who proved to be equally “capable” travellers. In this paper we will focus our attention on Agnes Ethel Conway’s account of the different places, people, cultural traditional values and customs she encountered in the Balkans, primarily in Montenegro. Keywords: the Balkans, travel, travelogue, Montenegro, wartime.