Bibliography

The Complete Bent (or very nearly)!

Offered below is a bibliography listing over 150 of Theodore Bent’s papers, articles, and lectures through a period of around twenty years, before his early death (aged 45) in 1897.

For more on Bent’s books, ebooks and audio, click here.

Links to available on-line sources have been added (accessed from July 2019). Many of these are freely available sources, while others are subscription only. Where possible the freely available sites are preferred. Occasionally not all of the Bents’ maps, illustrations, photographs, figures, etc., appear in electronic versions.

Apologies if the paper you are looking for has no link, or does not open (some links may be difficult, but not impossible, to access outside the US).

Please do contact us at info@tambent.com if you are aware of any reference not included or any link is broken.

You are reminded to check relevant copyright implications depending on your particular use of any of the content.

If you reproduce any entries from the following bibliography, please cite your reference as: “Accessed via the Bent Archive; www.tambent.com [date].”

Theodore Bent’s Articles, Books and Papers (prepared in 2010, updated 2022)

Theodore’s bibliography contains over 150 articles and contributions to magazines and journals – most of which are relatively easy to trace and access on-line from a number of specialist sites. The young author’s rather unfocused interests in European history are reflected in his early writings, but his annus mirabilis may be said to have been 1884, after which, following his work in the Cyclades, he launched himself on a career of archaeological and ethnographical explorations that his wife was to record in her Chronicles. From the mid-1890s Theodore’s travel, lecturing and monograph-writing commitments obliged him to cut back on his publication of articles and papers.

The bibliography that follows (2010, updated 2019) does not claim to be exhaustive, but will represent the majority of his (non-book) writings (for Bent’s books click here). He frequently allowed the ‘syndication’ of his articles, in particular to the popular US magazine Littell’s Living Age, and, where known, this has been added to the bibliographical information here.

(Some links may be difficult to access outside the US without an authorized VPN)

It is 1879, Bent is 27, married two years, and his first monograph has just appeared, now read on…

1879

1880

1881

1882

1883

(The Athenæum for 22nd December 1883 (No. 2930, p.804) prints an announcement from The Antiquary listing some of their forthcoming 1884 highlights, including an article by Theodore Bent on ‘Some Historical Manuscripts in the British Museum’. It appears that this article, if written, was never published in The Antiquary or elsewhere.)

1884

1885

1886

1887

1888

1889

1890

1891

1892

1893

1894

1895

1896

1897

Posthumous (prepared by Mabel Bent from her Chronicles and Theodore’s material)

1898

1900

“Southern Arabia” (Theodore and Mabel Bent). London, Smith, Elder and Co.

The Bents’ notebooks and diaries

The originals are held in the archive of the Hellenic Society, London. They have been scanned and are now available on open access.

Publications by Mabel Bent

1904

“The Monoliths of Aksum” (Mrs. Mabel V.A. Bent), Records of the Past, Vol.III, Part II, February, pp. 34-42.

1912

A series of Wall-Maps of the Holy Land/Palestine (co-produced with her sister Frances Hobson and referred to as the Bent-Hobson maps).

1918

“The Garden Tomb Maintenance Fund”, by Mrs. J. Theodore Bent, in ‘The Covenant People’, Journal of the Imperial British-Israel Association (not seen).

Mabel’s three other books

A Patience Pocket Book, plainly printed, put together by Mrs Theodore Bent”, Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1903/4.

Anglo-Saxons from Palestine, or, The imperial mystery of the lost tribes”, London : Sherrat & Hughes, 1908.

“The Garden Tomb, Golgotha and the Garden of Resurrection”, (with Arthur William Crawley-Boevey and Miss Hussey (c. 1920, Jerusalem: Committee of the Garden Tomb Maintenance Fund).

Other related material 

1891

‘Voyage d’exploration dans la Cilicia Tracheia, par M. J.-Théodore Bent’

 

1894

D.H. Müller, Epigraphische Denkmäler aus Abessinien Nach Abklatschen von J. Theodore Bent, Esq. (Vienna, 1894). Analyses of copies of inscriptions taken by Bent in Aksum and elsewhere in 1893.

1897

Two Months in Sokotra (by Ernest N. Bennett). Longman’s Magazine. v. 30 (May-Oct. 1897), pp. 405-413. [Bennett was the Bents’ ‘paying guest’ on this trip (early 1897, and Bent’s last), and his account, although in part unpleasant in today’s terms, is of value.]

Published articles, events, etc., on the Bents

‘To Anafi for a Name’, in search of the identity of the Bents’ dragoman, Manthaios Simos, by Gerald Brisch, in MondoGreco, Spring 2003.

‘The Travel Chronicles of Mabel Bent’, by Gerald Brisch and Brenda Stones, in Chris Stray (ed.) Travellers to Greece: 21-30. London: The Classical Association, London (2006).

‘With Theodore and Mabel Bent in Southern Arabia (1893-1897)’, by Gerald Brisch, British-Yemeni Society Journal, Vol. 18, 26-32 (2010).

‘Mabel Hall-Dare: Chronicles of Mrs. Theodore Bent’ (in the blog Georgian Gems, Regency Reads & Victorian Voices, 17 December 2018, by Janeite Kelly).

‘Tackling Africa – The Resourceful Mrs J Theodore Bent’, by Gerald Brisch.  A paper based on a presentation given on 2 July 2014 at the SCOLMA conference in Birmingham – ‘African Trajectories: Travel and the Archives’, and published in African Research and Documentation (ISSN 0305-862X) 125 (2014): 11-28.

Socotra Island: The Bent Expedition and Mrs. Bent‘, by S. Perez, in The Spinnerette, Issue 2: Monocentropus Balfouri, 2019, pp. 16-24, (not seen).

“Theodore and Mabel Bent in Southern Arabia”, the British Library’s ‘Untold Lives Blog’ for 8 June 2016.

“Exploring, Supporting and Collaborating: Mabel Bent in the Hadhramaut and Beyond (1893-1897)”, A lecture by Dr Holly O’Farrell, Leiden University, 5 July 2022, in association with ‘The Brussels Map Circle’. Venue: Leiden University, Plexus Building, Kaiserstraat 25, 2311 GN Leiden.

James Theodore Bent on Santorini“, in 2 Board – the official Athens Airport Magazine, Blue Issue, August 2020 – October 2020 (includes a few paragraphs translated into Greek from Bent’s chapter on Santorini in his The Cyclades, or life amongst the insular Greeks (1885).

Alice Norton, ‘Mabel Virginia Anna Bent – Explorer’, in Carloviana 2023, the Journal of the Carlow Historical and Archaeological Society (Dec. 2022, pp.117-123, contains 10 figures, including four unpublished watercolour sketches by J.T. Bent – in the Dodecanese, on Sokotra, in Adoua, in Zimbabwe).

Mathilde Pyrli, “Deliciously primitive”: Insular Greece through the Eyes of Theodore Bent, 1883–1888, a paper presented in: ‘Greece in Victorian Popular Culture’, REVICTO International Conference, Athens, 8–9 April 2022.

Meteora: “The Monasteries in the Air” in the Victorian periodical press, 1880 and 1888. An article in REVICTO, 01/03/2022.

“Island Attractions? Travel Writing on the Cyclades from the Middle Ages Until the Modern Day”, by Dr Ina Berg, in Mediterranean Studies 20(1), 2012, Penn State University Press (open access, viewed 6 April, 2023).

Rock Art of Soqotra, Yemen: A Forgotten Heritage Revisited, by Julian Jansen van Rensburg. 2018, Arts/ MDPI open access journals (accessed 27/04/2023).

“The Socotra Notebooks of Theodore and Mabel Bent (1896/1897)”, by Gerald Brisch, in The Friends of Soqotra Newsletter, Issue 19, 2022, pp.10-12.

Contemplating Women’s Imperial Service: Mabel Bent as Photographer, Travel Writer, and Collector”, by Esther Wetzel, in New American Studies Journal, Issue 74 (2023), Göttingen University Press (doi.org/10.18422/74-1394).

A Woman’s Work is Never (Un-)Done: A Response to ‘Contemplating Women’s Imperial Service: Mabel Bent as Photographer, Travel Writer, and Collector’, by Esther Wetzel”, by Verena Laschinger, in New American Studies Journal, Issue 74 (2023), Göttingen University Press (doi.org/10.18422/74-1395).

“Under the Syrian Sun” (Mabel Bent at Haifa 1908/9), by Sister Maria, in The British Journal of Nursing (13 March 1909, 213-215).

“Mabel Bent”. A short, anonymous, ‘AI’ YouTube video feature on Mabel Bent (October 2023). Do not rely on all the biographical details. The photograph is not Mabel Bent.

Mabel Bent, in “Trowel Blazers: Women in archaeology” (free ACL workshop with British Museum on 18.10.21). A YouTube video of a lecture given by Dr Katharine Hoare on a selection of women active in archaeology who had links with the British Museum. The section on Mabel Bent starts at about 4 minutes in (uploaded here, Oct 2023).

“Osteological analysis of the Early Bronze Age human remains excavated from Antiparos in the 19th century”. Laura Ortiz Guerrero (Unpublished Master’s Dissertation, University of Sheffield, Department of Archaeology, 2023).

Between Archaeology, Ethnology and Art: Greek Embroideries in Late Victorian Britain”, a contribution by Lenia Kouneni to the workshop ‘Rethinking Victorian Mediascapes’, at the University of St Andrews on 2 February 2024. Dr Kouneni talked “about Greek embroideries in Victorian Britain, focusing on Theodore and Mabel Bent as archaeologists and collectors”.

Other bibliographies

See also the French portal Persée for a selection of references to the Bents.

As well as the very extensive Bent Bibliography available via our own site, another free online source for Bent’s monographs is the one managed by “The Online Books Page”, hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.