Sidney Whitman (Whitman, Sidney, -1925) was a British writer and journalist. Public information about him is limited, and the details of his life are now difficult to trace, but it is clear that he made his career in writing and journalism, and that his works chiefly concern his observations of society and politics in Germany and Austria-Hungary. One of his works is held in this collection, Turkish Memories, whose very title points to his observations and records within the Ottoman Empire, written with the double eye of a traveller and a reporter: attentive both to local manners and to the drift of political affairs. His writings on the countries of Central Europe generally rest on first-hand experience and combine narrative with commentary, offering contemporary British readers a personal view of the changing European continent. Focused in subject and clear in stance, his books remain a reference for the study of early twentieth-century British current-affairs writing and continental observation.
