Spinsters Abroad by Dea Birkett
What spurred so many Victorian women to leave behind their secure middle-class homes and undertake perilous journeys of thousands of miles, tramping through tropical forests, caravanning across deserts, and scaling mountain ranges? And how were they able to travel so freely in exotic lands, when at home such independence was denied to them? This book draws upon the diaries and writings of more than 50 such women to describe their experiences and aspirations. Many of the journeys they made are re-constructed - Mary Gaunt's voyage along the West African coast, Mary Kingsley's jungle treks, Amelia Edwards's thousand-mile journey up the Nile and Isabella Bird's ascent of the Rocky Mountains are just a few. Were women such as Mary Kingsley and Isabella Bird simply the intrepid blue-stockings of popular history, or early feminists? Dea Birkett aruges that they were in fact neither - dissatisfied with the restricted lives prescribed for them by Victorian society, they sought and found new horizons abroad, and a degree of freedom and respect only afforded in their own countries to men.
Dea Birkett grew up in the south of England and was educated in Edinburgh, London, and the United States. She works as a freelance writer; her articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout Britian and America. She is the author of Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers and Jella: From Lagos to Liverpool--A Woman at Sea in a Man's World, both of which were published in the United Kingdom. She lives in London.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780631156048 |
| ISBN 10 | 0631156046 |
| Title | Spinsters Abroad |
| Author | Dea Birkett |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | John Wiley and Sons Ltd |
| Year published | 1989-04-06 |
| Number of pages | 312 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |