TO the Western eye there seems to be always hanging before Constantinople a veil of mystery and separation. Its remoteness from Great Britain and America in territorial distance and antiquity of history is intensified manyfold by that other remoteness, caused by variety of races, languages, customs, and creeds.It is difficult for the foreign resident to know it well, and for the passing stranger or tourist, utterly impossible.It has been my precious privilege to enjoy unusual opportunities for learning the story and entering into the life of the kaleidoscopiccity. The preparation of this book has been a labor of delight, but it has occupied many years. No man could have a more fascinating theme.Even as Constantinople has a charm for all classes of mankind, I have sought to make this not a volume for any one narrow range of readers, but a book for all.THE reception accorded to "Constantinople" both in this country and Europe, exceeded my most sanguine expectations. A book which had for its theme a capital at once so famous, so fascinating, and yet so little known, was doubtless sure of finding a place.None the less am I grateful to the press and the public for their cordial welcome. Though this is a carefully revised edition, as few changes as possible in the original have been made, and the work is substantially the same as when first published. The next score of years will transform Constantinople.Much that is described in these pages will soon vanish, "and the tourist seek it in vain". But as long as this book lasts, it will preserve the careful panorama of the capital as it was in the last year of the nineteenth century.EDWIN A. GROSVENOR.
About the Author: Edwin Augustus Grosvenor (1845 - 1936) was a historian, author, chairman of the history department at Amherst College, and longtime president of the national organization of Phi Beta Kappa societies. Grosvenor was called "one of the most cosmopolitan of Americans" by author and abolitionist Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Grosvenor was born in 1845 in West Newbury, MA, the son of Dr. Edwin Prescott Grosvenor and the author Harriet (Sanborn) Grosvenor. He prepared at Brown High School in Newburyport, MA, and graduated from Amherst College in 1867 as class poet and salutatorian. After graduating, he served as a tutor at Robert College in Constantinople, Turkey. After returning to the U.S., he obtained an M. A. from Amherst College and was ordained as a minister in Newburyport, 1872. In 1872 Edwin Grosvenor returned to Robert College with his young wife and began teaching. Grosvenor then taught at Amherst College from 1892 to 1914, and was professor emeritus until his death in 1936. His two volume Constantinople was "the most important treatise . . . that has yet appeared in English," wrote a reviewer in the Springfield Republican. "One of the books of the year.