This book provides critical editions with previously unpublished versions of all related texts, translations of all texts into English and a detailed analysis of the origins, known history, possible fate and exact nature of the Image of Edessa.

In 1845 and 1846 Charles Lewis Meryon published the two three-volume sets The Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope and The Travels of the Lady Hester Stanhope, which is still the most important source for the early life and first travels of Lady Hester. Towards the end of his life he wrote the Additional Memoirs for the years 1819-1820, the manuscript of which has lain virtually untouched and unknown for the last 150 years. The Additional Memoirs were known by previous biographers of Lady Hester - The Duchess of Cleveland and Lorna Gibb - but are now edited with an introduction for the first...