{"product_id":"letters-to-henrietta-book-isabella-l-bird-9780719560477","title":"Letters to Henrietta","description":"Before her first journey, no one would have guessed that Isabella Bird would become the heroine of Victorian travel. A middle-aged spinster on the Isle of Mull, she suffered from all kinds of strange diseases and was too frail to hold up her head without a steel support. Nonplussed, her doctors packed her off to the Pacific, the antipodean version of the spas of Switzerland, hoping for a cure.;Once there, her transformation was dramatic. Suddenly in Hawaii, she could climb the world's highest volcano - and was the first woman to do so; she rode an elephant through the untravelled jungles of Perak, she arrived in Hong Kong just in time to see it burn, and in Colorado she fell in love with a one-eyed desperado called Rocky Mountain Jim. But whenever she came home, her illness returned, making another trip essential.;Ultimately, she became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (another female first), adviser to Gladstone and friend of Queen Victoria. She also became the mistress of her own mythology; insisting that her books reproduced the fresh impressions recorded in her letters.This selection reveals not the Isabella Bird we thought we knew, but instead a tempestuous, self-obsessed woman, occasionally at odds with the idea of Empire, deflecting proposals right and left. The letters also throw light on a fascinating relationship with Hennie, an equally clever and curious sister who had to stay behind.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49537759641873,"sku":"GOR004137910","price":32.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53162877124881,"sku":"GOR004355839","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0719560470.jpg?v=1751424849","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/letters-to-henrietta-book-isabella-l-bird-9780719560477","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}