Isabella L. Bird most famous book is probably A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. Bird's time in the Rockies was enlivened especially by her acquaintance with Jim Nugent, a textbook outlaw with one
This classic travel book details Isabella Bird's 1878 trip, where she set out alone to explore the interior of Japan - a rarity not only because of Bird's sex but because the country was virtually unk
The intrepid explorer recounts her 1878 excursion by pack horse, rickshaw, and foot into the back country of the Far East. In poignant, vivid letters, Bird describes the vicissitudes of her journey ?
After the success of The Englishwoman in America (also reissued in this series), the indefatigable Isabella Bird (1831–1904) continued her travels – first to Scotland, then to Australia and Hawaii – before returning to the United States and taking up residence in what was then the newest state, Colorado. Her adventures here – recorded as letters to her sister which she artlessly tells the reader were never intended for publication – included riding alone across the prairie, trying to help a family dying of cholera in the face of indifference from the local inhabitants, a sight of the invalids who were coming to Denver in huge numbers to be cured by the mountain air, and an encounter (if it was nothing more) with that western archetype, the one-eyed, romantic, courteous, poetry-declaiming outlaw, who by the following year was 'in a dishonoured grave, with a rifle bullet in his brain'.
In 1856, Isabella Bird published The Englishwoman in America, the first of what would be many books of her travels around the world. Adopting a tone of aloof bemusement, she describes in detail the hardships and annoyances of her travels by sea from England to Halifax, and on the road to Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago. The book's 20 chapters are full of keenly observed and entertainingly told stories of pickpockets and luggage thieves, greasy hotels, and Americans who are very polite, but have the unfortunate habit of spitting on the floor. Bird admits to sharing the regrettably prejudiced view the English have of America, but nevertheless finds much to like and admire in this new country bustling with ethnically diverse immigrants full of energy and bravado. The Englishwoman in America is a wonderful travelogue that offers a lively and personal glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century America.
