Mayy Ziadeh (1886-1941)

Abstract

Born in Palestine, of a Lebanese father and a Palestinian
mother, Mayy Ziadeh received her secondary education from the French Sisters of Visitation at a boarding school at Aintoura, in Lebanon. It was here that she began to write under the influence of Western Romantic authors, both French and British, as an entry from her school diary suggests: "I am alone in the woods since two hours. Alone with Byron, poet of
violence and sweetness ... While I write, his Childe Harold lies at my feet. Did Byron ever dream that a Lebanese girl would spend with him or with some of his works, long, lonely hours in the woods of Lebanon?"