As a historian of feminism, I am always on the lookout for sources that reveal women’s voices and interpretation of experiences often imagined as belonging primarily to men. Whether erudite travelogue, personal journey of discovery, or sensationalist narrative of adventure and exploration, books written by women traveling on their own were among the most popular writings published in the Victorian era. Often aimed at justifying the expansion of woman’s proper “sphere,” these books are perhaps even more enthralling to the contemporary reader —since they seem to defy everything we think we know about the constrained lives of women in this era. In addition to illuminating the significant roles that women played in the principal conflicts and international crises of the nineteenth century, these stories of women wading through swamps, joining military campaigns, marching across deserts, up mountains, and through contested lands often armed only with walking sticks, enormous determination, and sheer chutzpah, never fail to fascinate!
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Sultan To Sultan - Adventures Among The Masai And Other Tribes Of East Africa
“The white queen is coming”. In April of 1891, May French-Sheldon—a 44-year-old, white American woman—left her husband back in London while she set out to “conquer” Africa at the head of an expedition of 140 African porters dressed in a ballgown of white silk topped with a tiara and waist-length blonde wig, carrying a whip coiled at her back, two hip pistols, a ceremonial sword, and an alpine staff from which flew a banner emblazoned with the Latin phrase: “noli me tangere” (“touch me not”).
After four months exploring the lakes at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro, this flamboyant Victorian-era traveler returned to publish a narrative of her travels in East Africa from “sultan to sultan” illustrating the effectiveness of what she deemed a “womanly” form of (less violent) colonial conquest.
In 1842, after 45 years of frustratingly sedentary domesticity, the Austrian-born Ida Pfeiffer gave full vent to her wanderlust. Within five years, her jaw-dropping round-the-world journeys would make her one of the most widely-traveled persons of that century, while her talent for vivid portrayals made her one of the most well-known travel writers. Of her many chronicles, I especially enjoy this tale of her 1845 trip to the northern reaches of Scandinavia and Iceland—a place almost no continental Europeans had visited and few even knew existed. Pfeiffer’s insights and thoughtful reportage, as well as a newly emerging fascination with Iceland and Icelanders in our own time, has given this rare travel narrative new currency.
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
The first autobiography published by an Afro-Caribbean (“Creole”) woman, this “adventure story” chronicles the life of Jamaican icon and national heroine, Mary Seacole who, in her own time, rivaled Florence Nightingale as a founder of modern nursing. The “yaller doctress” became known for her devising of successful treatments for cholera, yellow fever, and malaria in Jamaica and, later, Panama, and became internationally renowned after founding her own hospital-hotel at the frontlines of the Crimean War (1853-1856) where she nursed members of the British military. Upon publication, Seacole’s best-selling life-story gained her awards, acclaim, and the respect of the British nation (denied her by Florence Nightingale, by the way). Seacole’s effervescent writing bubbles over with optimism and can-do spirit.
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Unless I am allowed to tell the story of my life in my own way, I cannot tell it at all
Mary Seacole - traveller, nurse, businesswoman and radical for her time - defied a prejudiced British government to care for soldiers wounded during the Crimean War.
This ground breaking account, written by Seacole in 1857, brings to life her incredible journey from Jamaica to Central America and England, and then on to modern-day Ukraine, where she acted as nurse to injured soldiers while running her business, the…
Marking a turning point in women’s travel writing and scholarly publications, British artist, writer, and Egyptologist, Amelia Edwards, brought unparalleled expertise and knowledge of Egyptian antiquities to her narrative, in the process helping to found the modern study of Egyptology. Written by a gifted writer and accomplished novelist, her book follows her trip up the Nile River to investigate some of the world’s most important ancient archeological sites and is beautifully illustrated with her own watercolors as well as witty, insightful stories of everyday life in nineteenth-century Egypt.
As enthralling as any work of fiction, A Thousand Miles up the Nile is the quintessential Victorian travel book.
In 1873, Amelia B. Edwards, a Victorian gentlewoman, spent the winter visiting the then largely unspoiled splendors of ancient Egypt. An accurate and sympathetic observer, she brings nineteenth-century Egypt to life. A Thousand Miles up the Nile was an instant hit in 1876, and is received with equal enthusiasm by modern readers.
Fans of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody Emerson mystery series will see similarities between the two Amelias. More importantly, A Thousand Miles up the Nile provides a wealth of background…
In 1865, the 22-year-old Salama bint Said (later known as Emily Reute), daughter of the great Sultan Said of Zanzibar, become involved in a failed coup against her older brother. Fleeing for her life with her German lover, Rudolph Ruete, she would find herself widowed with two children and marooned in Germany without financial support at age 26. Written as a heartwarming series of letters addressed to her children, the first known autobiography and travelogue published by an Arab woman poses serious challenge to the rationales underlying both women’s subordination and economic dependence on men as well as European imperialism in Africa and the Arab world.
Return to an era when Zanzibar was ruled by sultans, and enter a vanished world of harems, slave trading, and court intrigues. In this insider's story, a sultan's daughter who fled her gilded cage offers a compelling look at nineteenth-century Arabic and African royal life. After years of exile in Europe, the former princess wrote this fascinating memoir as a legacy for her children and a warm reminiscence of her island home. Born Salamah bint Said, Princess of Zanzibar, in 1844, author Emily Ruete grew up in a harem with scores of siblings. The royal family maintained its fabulous wealth…
Bly was a brilliant investigative journalist best known in the United States for her exposé of the Women’s Lunatic Asylum based on her feigning of insanity as an undercover patient … until she became even more famous for her circumnavigation of the globe, inspired by Jules Verne’s fictional Around the World in 80 Days. Sponsored and encouraged by Joseph Pulitzer (editor of the tabloid newspaper, The New York World) and written in a witty, breezy style, Bly’s pithily-told tale upends every stereotype of fragile Victorian womanhood; her gutsy candor about her madcap race around what was supposed to be a wholly man’s world still stuns and delights!
"She was part of the 'stunt girl' movement that was very important in the 1880s and 1890s as these big, mass-circulation yellow journalism papers came into the fore." -Brooke Kroeger
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days (1890) is a travel narrative by American investigative journalist Nellie Bly. Proposed as a recreation of the journey undertaken by Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (1873), Bly's journey was covered in Joseph Pulitzer's popular newspaper the New York World, inspiring countless others to attempt to surpass her record. At the time, readers at home were encouraged to estimate…
What happens when a novelist with a “razor-sharp wit” (Newsday), a “singular sensibility” (Huff Post), and a lifetime of fear about getting sick finds a lump where no lump should be? Months of medical mishaps, coded language, and Doctors who don't get it.
With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling artistry of an acclaimed novelist, Elizabeth Benedict recollects her cancer diagnosis after discovering multiplying lumps in her armpit. In compact, explosive chapters, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity, she chronicles her illness from muddled diagnosis to “natural remedies,” to debilitating treatments, as she gathers sustenance from family, an assortment of urbane friends, and a fearless “cancer guru.”
Rewriting Illness is suffused with suspense, secrets, and the unexpected solace of silence.
By turns somber and funny but above all provocative, Elizabeth Benedict's Rewriting Illness: A View of My Own is a most unconventional memoir. With wisdom, self-effacing wit, and the story-telling skills of a seasoned novelist, she brings to life her cancer diagnosis and committed hypochondria. As she discovers multiplying lumps in her armpit, she describes her initial terror, interspersed with moments of self-mocking levity as she indulges in "natural remedies," among them chanting Tibetan mantras, drinking shots of wheat grass, and finding medicinal properties in chocolate babka. She tracks the progression of her illness from muddled diagnosis to debilitating treatment…
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