Mrs Duberly's War : Journal and Letters from the Crimea, 1854-6

"In 1854 Fanny Duberly accompanied her husband to the Crimea, and remained there until the end of the fighting - she was the only officer's wife to witness the entire campaign." "Mrs Duberly survived the severe winter of 1854-55, witnessed the battle of Balaklava and the charge of the Light Brigade, and rode through the ruins of Sebastopol. Spirited and courageous, she was known by sight to British and French soldiers across the battlefields, regarded often with enthusiasm and sometimes with disapproval. Witty and beautiful, she enjoyed flirtatious friendships with many of the most important men of the campaign." "Her Journal kept during the Russian War was published in 1855 and caused a sensation. Although widely praised as the 'new heroine for the Crimea', Fanny was also censured, ridiculed, and even parodied in Punch. She had stepped into a man's world, and written about it in a way that seemed to some at the Front an invasion of privacy and to others at home an abandonment of gentility."--Jacket.