Elena Ghica
| Dora d'Istria | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Dora d'Istria by Petre Mateescu (1876)
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| Born |
22 January 1828 Bucharest, Romania |
| Died | 17 November 1888 (aged 60) Florence, Italy |
| Occupation | Poet and writer |
| Genre | Romanticism |
| Literary movement | Albanian National Awakening |
Dora d'Istria, pen-name of duchess Helena Koltsova-Massalskaya born Elena Ghica (Gjika/Xhika) (January 22, 1828, Bucharest – November 17, 1888, Florence) was a Wallachian-born Romantic writer and feminist of Albanian-Romanian descent.
She was born in Bucharest in 1828 as a member of the Ghica family and was the daughter of Mihai Ghica and the niece of the reigning Prince of Wallachia Grigore IV Ghica. She received a thorough education that was continued abroad - first in Dresden, then in Vienna, then in Venice, and finally in Berlin where she gave a sample of her mastery of Ancient Greek to Alexander Von Humboldt.
D'Istria returned to her home country in 1849 and married the Russian duke Alexander Koltsov-Massalski making her the duchess Helena Koltsova-Massalskaya. They lived for several years in Russia, mostly in Saint Petersburg, but Dora never cherished the Russian nationalist views of her husband or the Eastern Orthodox bigotry of the Court of the Despotic Emperor Nicholas I. As her health decayed in the Russian climate, she took her husband's advice and travelled to Central Europe. She first went to Switzerland for several years and then journeyed through Greece and Anatolia. Finally, she returned to Italy and lived in a villa in Florence, while occasionally traveling to France, Ireland and the United States.
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