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 ...
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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.
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Seller's Description:
First Edition. Hardback. Dust Jacket. Large 8vo. pp ix, 356. Original publisher's black cloth, lettered gilt at the spine. ISBN: 0719560470 Fine in fine dust jacket.
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Seller's Description:
Very good in Very good jacket. VGC. John Murray, 2002. First edition-first printing. Dark blue hardback (gilt lettering to the spine, two small dents on the edges of the cover) with Dj(very small tear, a couple of creases and nicks on the edges of the Dj cover, some ink marks inside the edges of the Dj cover), both in VGC. Illustrated with b/w photos, maps. Nice and clean pages but with small foxing marks and marks on the outer edges, some marks on the edges of the front and back endpapers, The book is in VGC with some light shelf wear.363pp including List of illustrations, chronology, notes on people and places, bibliography, index and four letters that never before published. Price un-clipped. A collectable and scarce first edition.
