Autor: Isabella L. Bird

Born in Yorkshire in 1831, Isabella Bird was an odd bird herself. An outdoorswoman, she chafed at the restrictions posed by her class and sex, and saw writing accounts of her travel experiences as an opportunity to escape a stifling town life for the open road. At the age of twenty-two, while most Victorian women were settling into marriage, Bird embarked on her first trip for the purpose of writing a travelogue. Her travels through Canada and the United States led to her book, An Englishwoman in America, published in 1856. The travel bug had bit.Undeterred by unchartered territory and political uprisings, Bird ventured every which direction, resulting in such books as The Hawaiian Archipelago and Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. When she married her long time friend, Dr. John Bishop, it was under the stipulation that she would still travel on her own. Her last journey was in October 1904, before dying from an inoperable tumor.