From Russia (to Ireland) with Love

In June 1813, London’s Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure published two letters from Russia. They were written by Eleanor Cavanagh, a lady’s maid who had travelled there between 1805 and 1807. Prefaced by a brief, but cutting, introduction that marvelled at how the letters revealed the effects of travel on the mind of ‘an uneducated Irish girl’, they were among the first published Irish accounts of Russia.