Dora d’Istria (the pen name she is known by) was born as Elena Ghica in Bucharest in 1828 into one of the most important aristocratic families of the time. Elena’s paternal uncle, Alexandru, was prince of Wallachia, while her father, Mihail, held important posts in the government of the Principality. We know from the scarce evidence about her childhood that Elena received a broad and wide-ranging education (linguistic, literary, musical and artistic).

After her marriage in 1849 to a Russian prince, she lived in that country until in 1855, when she decided to leave both her husband and Russia. She settled in Switzerland, where she published her first work, La vie monastique dans l’Église orientale (1855), writing for the first time as Dora d’Istria. The author never explained her choice of this pen name. The most convincing hypothesis is that “Dora” was derived from the Ancient Greek doron (gift) and that “d’Istria” alludes to the old name for the Danube (Istros or Ister). Her next publication was a 4-volume study of the civilization of the German-speaking cantons of Switzerland: La Suisse allemande et l’ascension du Mœnch (1855). These works, which are largely historical and religious in nature, propose a model of democracy defined by her as evangelical.

Dora d’Istria’s work ranges from history to literature and ethnology, and from religion to politics and law. The writer sought to make western Europeans more clearly aware of the many faces of eastern-European culture and civilization at a crucial period for the national affairs of many Balkan states, primarily the Romanian principalities. In the late 1850s Dora d’Istria broadened her scope to international politics with contributions to the Turin daily newspaper Il Diritto. These articles (1856-57) dealt with the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which, following the 1856 Congress of Paris, had become a central issue in international politics. The author advocated before a western-European readership the union and autonomy of these principalities under a powerful and ancient indigenous ruling dynasty. The nationality issues of South-East Europe were a constant preoccupation, both in specific works dedicated to the characteristics and rights of the individual nationalities and in the coverage of these topics across her writings. Aiming to reach readers and decision-makers in the West, she propagated the formation of national, independent states in south-eastern Europe, mainly in contributions to the Revue des deux mondes on popular songs in the Balkans. She also published Excursions en Roumélie et en Morée in 2 volumes in 1863.

The national cause she championed most ardently was that of the Albanians, to whom she felt particularly close because of her family origins (the Ghicas claimed to have Epirote roots). Dora d’Istria was so convinced of her origins that she entitled her history of the Ghica princes Gli Albanesi in Romania. Storia dei principi Ghika nei secoli XVII, XVIII e XIX (“The Albanians in Romania: A history of the Ghica princes in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries”, 1873). She was one of the first academics to introduce a wide European readership to the existence and characteristics of the Albanian nation, in her extensive essay “La nationalité albanaise d’après les chants populaires” (Revue des deux mondes, 1866). In her study of history and, especially, popular song, the author sought to define the Albanian national spirit, while also attempting to demonstrate that Albania was a national entity as well as a geographic one.

Her work on behalf of Albanians led Dora d’Istria to forge close links with prominent figures in the Italo-Albanian (Arbëresh) community of southern Italy, such as De Rada and Camarda, with whom she maintained a long correspondence. Dora d’Istria attributed a key role to the Arbëreshë in the process of Albanian national liberation. As custodians of the ancient traditions of their people, they were said to have introduced Western ideas to their compatriots on the opposite shore of the Adriatic. Like all exponents of Albanian and, in particular, Arbëresh culture, Dora d’Istria subscribed to the idea that the “people of the eagles” descended from the legendary Pelasgians. This theory, scientifically unsound though it was, constituted a genuine origin myth for Albanian national awareness, and a claim to a respectable descent from classical antiquity.

Dora d’Istria also pioneered women’s history in her Les femmes en Orient (1859-60, focusing on Russia and Central/Eastern Europe), and Des femmes par une femme (1865, on Western Europe). She usually wrote in French, and chose Italy as her adopted homeland, settling first in Livorno, then in Venice and Turin and finally (in 1870) in Florence, where she died in 1888.