WOMEN'S TRAVEL WRITING, 1830-1930:

BIOGRAPHIES

Compiled for the WTW Project by Cameron Esslemont, Karen Roggenkamp & Sarah Wadsworth
Women Travellers By Area:
  1. Africa
  2. Latin America
  3. North America

CALDERON DE LA BARCA, FRANCES ERSKINE INGLIS, 1804-1882

Madame "Fanny" Calderon De La Barca was born Frances Erskine Inglis in Edinburgh in 1804. When she was young the family moved to Normandy, and later the United States. She grew up residing at Boston, Staten Island, and Baltimore. Her husband to be, Don Angel Calderon de la Barca, was born in Spain and was appointed Minister to Mexico in 1838--the same year they were married. The letters she then wrote from his postings in Cuba and Mexico were possibly not intended for publication, but a friend in the business, Prescott, assembled them into a manuscript and in 1843 Life in Mexico appeared in Boston and Mexico. Reviews of the book appeared that same year in the North American Review and the Edinburgh Review. The book was considered accurate and detailed enough to be used as a guide by American Officers during the Mexican War of 1847.

After years of study, Calderon de la Barca converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1843 her husband was sent back as Minister to Washington and there the couple moved among high social circles which included Daniel Webster and John Calhoun. They remained in Washington until 1853 when political changes in Spain forced Don Angel to return to Madrid as Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 1854, a publication named El Murcielago (The Bat) appeared containing attacks against the government (New York, 1856). Its author was Madame Calderon de la Barca, writing under the persona of a young German diplomat. Later that same year Frances lost the sympathy of her home country in the matter of land for Protestant burials in Catholic Spain. She argued that Catholics did not have possession of land in England and that anyway the Protestants in Spain were few in number.

1854 continued to be a turbulent year for the couple, as in July the Spanish populace rose up against the Sartoris government. Calderon de la Barca related that her husband escaped by a ladder into the Danish Legation compound. The couple fled Spain and returned some years later.

In 1861 Don Angel died in San Sebastian, just as they finished building a retreat in the village of Zarauz on the coast of the Bay of Biscay. Frances returned to a convent close by, just over the French border. She accepted a request by Queen Isabella to undertake the education of the young Infanta Isabella, her youngest child. Upon the return of the Bourbons to Spain, Calderon de la Barca was made a Marquesa and spent the remainder of her life in the royal atmosphere in Madrid, finally dying on Feburary 3, 1882.

DREIER, KATHERINE SOPHIE, 1877-1952

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Katherine Sophie Dreier sought throughout her life to combine her commitment to social reform with her attraction to the arts. In 1900 she enrolled in the Pratt Institute for a year of art study, and in 1902 and 1903 traveled in Europe with Dorothea and Mary Sullivan to study the old masters. 1905 saw her first commission, an altar painting for the chapel of Saint Paul's School in Garden City, N.Y. She returned to Europe and studied in Paris then moved to London. Here she pursued her painting. The American actress and feminist Elizabeth Robins introduced her into a circle of artists and literati where she met and engaged Edward Thrumbull. They returned to her family home in Brooklyn for their wedding. The marriage was annulled soon after it was learned that Thrumbull already had a wife and children.

She traveled to Europe briefly where her first exhibition opened in London and then toured Germany. After this, in 1912, she returned to New York where she exhibited in the 1913 Armory show. Two years later she launched the Cooperative Mural Workshop, a combination art school and workshop, which operated until 1917. In 1916 she was invited to help found the Society of Independent Artists which brought her into circles of the European and American avant-garde, most notably working with Marcel Duchamp as friend, partner, and patron.

In 1920 Dreier enlisted Duchamp and Man Ray in founding a new organization--the Societe Anonyme, "a center for the study and promotion of modern art." Throughout the twenties Anonyme was New York's first museum of modern art, presenting an international array of cubists, constructivists, expressionists, futurists, Bauhaus artists, and dadaists. It hosted the first American one-man shows of Kandinsky, Klee, Campendonk, and Leger.

The opening in 1929 of the New York Museum of Modern Art reduced Dreier's hopes of Anonyme becoming a permanent museum. She remained active in her own activities including exhibitions, lecture series, and writing. In 1941 Dreier and Duchamp presented the Societe Anonyme's collection to Yale University for safeguarding and preservation. They worked together on a catalogue of the collection and it was published in 1950. She died in 1952 of non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver.(CE)

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GAUNT, MARY ELIZA BAKEWELL, 1861-1942

Mary Eliza Bakewell Gaunt was born 20 February 1861 in Victoria, Australia, where her father worked as a magistrate in the gold fields. Later remarking that she had grown up in a family greatly informed by adventure and travel, Gaunt was a self-supporting writer of fiction and non-fiction who insisted on an image of female independence.

Gaunt asserted that independence early in life, enrolling in the University of Melbourne in 1881 (one of the first women to do so). She left school, however, after only a year to pursue a career in writing, contributing at first articles and reviews to Australian newspapers. She made her first voyage to England and India in 1890, an occasion which encouraged her to turn some of her life experiences into fiction. Her first novel, Dave's Sweetheart, was published in 1894 in London, the year she also married Dr. Hubert Miller, who encouraged her writing. During the next few years she published several more romances set in Australia and gained a popular following in that nation.

But when Dr. Miller died unexpectedly in 1900, leaving Gaunt childless and with only a small inheritance, she turned to writing to support herself, moving to London almost immediately to seek a larger readership and greater income. In 1904 and 1906 she published her first two "African novels," based on research Gaunt had made about West Africa. Popular successes, these novels financed her first voyage to Africa in 1908 and the writing of additional novels about "exotic" foreign lands.

In 1911 Gaunt's principal publisher, T. W. Laurie, financed a second trip to West Africa so that Gaunt could produce a travel book for the firm. The excerpts published here from Alone in West Africa are good examples of the pseudo-scientific racism that informed much of Gaunt's work. The title of the travel book is indicative of the way Gaunt wished to present herself and her fictional heroines, as independent and adventurous people. Also notable in the excerpts are comments on Gaunt's unusual "open air theory" of health. Believing that fresh air prevented all major illness, and refusing to sleep under mosquito netting even in the most malaria-infested areas, Gaunt defied the odds and travelled through African healthfully.

Gaunt continued her travels and travel writing after returning from Africa, most notably with trips to China, Siberia, the West Indies, and the rest of Europe. Finally settling down in Italy, Gaunt spent the rest of her life drawing upon her adventures for more novels.

Gaunt lived peacefully in Italy until 1940, when the Second World War forced her to flee her home, leaving her belongings and papers behind. She died in Cannes on 19 January 1942 of respiratory illness. (KR)

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NORTH, MARIANNE, 1830-1890

Born 24 October 1830 in Hastings, Marianne North spent the greater part of her life traveling, first with her parents, and later as an artist and amateur botanist.

North had little formal education, but she did grow up in a prosperous Victorian family, which fostered her special artistic talents. Travel, too, served as a major influence in North's early life. Even when she was a child, her family traveled across England and into the Continent each year. After North's mother died in 1855, North began traveling farther afield with her father, visiting such locales as Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.

North's beloved father died in 1869, leaving his daughter to travel independently. In 1871 she entered her first long journey, taking on a "self-imposed task of recording the world's tropical flora" (Middleton 54). This year she visited Canada, the United States, Jamaica, and Brazil, not returning to England until 1873. Her next journey in 1875 took her to Japan, Java, and Ceylon; and she returned to the East in 1877 with travels again to Ceylon and India. 1880 took North to Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, Hawaii, and the United States.

North's final two long journeys were perhaps the most taxing physically. In 1882 she visited South Africa, where her health began to fail. Increasingly deaf and nervous, North, already a rather isolated woman, began to seek even more isolation. Her final journey was to Chile in 1884, where she successfully sought a particular mountain-top tree. But by then her health was compromised, and the trip abroad was her last.

By 1879 North had acquired so many paintings of natural life that she began seeking a permanent home for her work. The North Gallery, which North helped design, at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew opened in June 1882.

Through all her travels North, an unassuming woman, made quick friendships with locals and showed relatively balanced attitudes towards servants and natives. She avoided in her writings commenting either on political or social situations, but concentrated on describing her first love: the botany around her. She was happiest when she could be alone, hunting up new plants to paint; and she eventually discovered four new species.

North died 30 August 1890 at her home in Gloucestershire, a house whose garden was stocked with plants from around the world. Beginning in 1892, her sister, Catherine North Symonds, began the posthumous publication of North's travel writings. (KR)

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O'SHAUGHNESSY, EDITH, 1870-1939

The daughter of Elliott Coues and Jeanne Augusta (McKinney) Coues, Edith Louise Coues was born in Columbia, SC in 1870. She was educated by private tutors and at the Convent of Notre Dame in Maryland. On April 22, 1901, she married Nelson O'Shaughnessy, of New York City, in Rome, Italy. Edith and Nelson O'Shaughnessy had one child, Elim (a son).

Nelson O'Shaughnessy, an alumnus of Georgetown College and a graduate of Oxford University, had studied international law at Inner Temple, London, and foreign languages in various European countries. From 1904 to 1915 he held a number of posts in the American diplomatic service, including assignments in Copenhagen, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Vienna, Bucharest, Mexico, and Rio de Janeiro. It was during Nelson O'Shaughnessy's diplomatic service in Mexico (1911-1914) that Edith wrote A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico (1916) and Diplomatic Days (1917). Both volumes consist of a series of letters written to Edith O'Shaughnessy's mother, with Diplomatic Days describing the period 1911-1912, when the government of Madero replaced that of Diaz, and A Diplomat's Wife in Mexico covering the tumultuous years of 1913 and 1914, when the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Mexico. A third book arising from her experience in Mexico is Intimate Pages of Mexican History, in which O'Shaughnessy provides accounts of Mexican Presidents Diaz, de la Barra, Madero, and Huerta, all of whom she knew personally.

O'Shaughnessy's other travel books include Alsace in Rust and Gold (1920), a journal of her residence in Alsace, My Lorraine Journal (1918), an account of her travels along the Marne, and Other Ways and Other Flesh (1929), a series of sketches describing the village of Rankweil in Leichtenstein.

In addition to her travel writing, Edith O'Shaughnessy published a biography of the duchess Marie Adelaide (1932) and two works of fiction: Married Life (1925), a collection of short stories, and Viennese Medley (1927), a novel about life in Vienna after the first World War. Viennese Medley was produced for the screen in 1924. O'Shaughnessy also contributed articles to many periodicals, including Harper's Magazine and Review of Reviews. She died in New York City on February 18, 1939. (SW)

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PAINE, CAROLINE

Virtually nothing is known about Caroline Paine. Her life ran from approximately 1820 to approximately 1880, and her only published text on record is Tent to Harem: Notes of an Oriental Trip, in which she chronicled her travels across Egyptian North Africa and Turkey East in 1850 and 1851. Based on her presentation of self in her travel narrative, critic Mary Suzanne Schriber calls Paine an "outright adventurer", rather than a woman who traveled for missionary or scientific purposes. But any other facts about Paine's life seem lost to biographers. (KR)

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RUETE, EMILY, 1844-1924

Emily Ruete (Sayyida Salma) was born August 30, 1844 to the octogenarian Sultan Sai'd ibn Sultan Al Bu-Sai'd of Zanzibar, and Jilfidan, a Circassian concubine and member of the Sultan's harem. A well-educated girl, she was fluent in Arabic and Swahili, and a self-taught writer. By her own account, Ruete enjoyed an idyllic childhood, but family strife broke out after her father died in 1856. In 1859 two of her brothers, Barghash and Majid, struggled for power, and Ruete aided Barghash in his attempted insurrection against Sultan Majid. Though his favorite sister had plotted against him, Majid forgave her when the insurrection failed, a move which deeply displeased Barghash and turned him permanently against her. Other family members disowned her after the insurrection attempt as well, and Ruete gradually turned her attentions toward the Europeans living in Zanzibar.

One of those Europeans was Rudolph Heinrich Ruete, an agent for a German merchantile firm who lived next door to Emily. They began an affair, and when news of a pregnancy surfaced in 1866, Emily faced possible execution for disgracing the family. The British consulate helped her flee to Aden, where she and Heinrich were married after her conversion to Christianity, baptism, and renaming. The child born of the affair probably died in the spring of 1867, but the Ruetes quickly had three more children: daughters Antonie and Rosalie, born in 1868 and 1870, and son Said (later Rudolph Said), born in 1869.

In 1870 Heinrich Ruete was killed in a tramway accident, and Emily's one real link to European life was broken. Van Donzel remarks that henceforth "sorrow, homesickness, anxiety about her children's future, doubts about having become a Christian put Frau Ruete under heavy nervous strain" (30), and she isolated herself from other Germans, refusing to "assimilate" fully and touting her royal status wherever possible. Following Heinrich's death Ruete began concerted efforts to renew her ties with relatives in Zanzibar, and she began lobbying for a visit to the island, requesting the diplomatic aid of powerful German social circles and even of Emperor William I. Nevertheless, despite the fact that Ruete "never thought of denying that she was an Arab" (Van Donzel 30), her family viewed her as traitorous to Zanzibar and to Islam and refused to respond to her approaches.

In 1875, Sultan Barghash, who had succeeded Majid, visited England, and Ruete aspired to meet him there. The British government, however, prevented the visit, fearing a diplomatic scene. Crushed, Ruete began her Memoirs (which were not finished until 1886) and continued lobbying for a return to Zanzibar. Finally, in 1885, the German government secretly sent her to Zanzibar, plotting to use her as a pawn in obtaining Zanzibar as a German protectorate and strengthening their colonial interests in East Africa. The attempt backfired as Sultan Barghash was outraged by the visit and refused to see her. Ruete wrote of the visit, "What am I now? A bad Christian, and only half a German" (Barine 207).

In 1886 Ruete's Memoirs of an Arabian Princess was published in Germany, where it enjoyed glowing journal reviews and a popular reception. Two English editions quickly followed in 1888.

Also in 1888, Ruete returned to Zanzibar to attempt once more to reclaim her cultural and financial inheritance. Shunned again by most Arabs and this time also by Europeans, Ruete expressed disgust with the German and British governments for failing to support her, and with Zanzibar for refusing to accept and compensate her. After a few months in Zanzibar, Ruete left for the Syrian coast, where she lived for the next twenty-five years. She finally returned to Germany in 1914 and lived there until February 29, 1924, when she died of pneumonia. Finally considering herself a cultural outsider to the end, Ruete's final years were lonely and jaded. As Barine remarks, she "lived among us without understanding us, without loving us" (163). (KR)

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SHELDON, MARY FRENCH, 1847-1936

Born in 1848 to an affluent, well-cultured family, the American Mary (May) French Sheldon was one of the late nineteenth century's most adventurous and colorful travelers. Completing much of her childhood education in Italy, Sheldon found her way into print first with a verse translation of Flaubert's novel Salambo in 1887 and then with her own novel, Herbert Severance, in 1889.

Influenced by her travels and by her interest in the emerging disciplines of anthropology and ethnology, Sheldon soon turned her attentions to non-fiction writing. Basing her narratives on her unprecedented trips into Africa, she "ventured into areas where only two or three white men had preceded her" (Romero 18), both literally and figuratively. In 1891 she mounted her first expedition to East Africa, blithely leaving her wealthy husband, Eli Sheldon, behind. For this action, Sheldon drew sharp criticism from the British press, which cast her as "another vulgar America" (Early 69) who had forgotten her womanly sphere in a frenzy of sensational "globetrotting."

Despite stinging depictions of her as a madwoman in the pages of the press and the uncooperative nature of British colonial authorities in Zanzibar, Sheldon gathered a sizeable entourage of 130 Zanzibarian men (and here she found her connections with good friend Henry Stanley of use) and ventured toward the interior of the continent. Sheldon's traveling gear was almost as colorful as she was: she included in her supplies a "luxuriant blonde wig and spangled white ball gown," a complete tea service, two pistols, an American flag, and her own personal banner which read "noli me tangere" (Early 73).

Sheldon's porters rebelled as they neared Masai country, forcing the expedition to turn back short of its ultimate travel goal. But Sheldon narrated her travels first in article for the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, and then in her book Sultan to Sultan, published in 1892. The article for the Geographic Society is significant in that it supports a side of Sheldon the British press chose to ignore: she was breaking into new, scientific anthropological territory with her travel accounts by focusing on the women and children in the territories she visited. Indeed, one modern critic asserts that Sheldon's work was "unprecedented" and that her work represents notable "contributions to geography and ethnography" (Early 69). The travels in East Africa, then, did include specific scholarly aims; and Sheldon was invited to lecture at meetings of a number of professional societies once she returned to Europe. Additionally, she was among only twenty-two women who were invited to join the Royal Geographic Society in 1892--an invitation eventually withdrawn after contentious debate about women's presence in the Society. Still, transcending the professional snub from the fellows of the Royal Geographic Society and the cruel public barbs of the press, Sheldon wished to prove that, when it came to travelling and to ethnography, "a woman could do what a man did" and that she could do "it in masculine terms" (Early 68, 70). Despite health problems brought about by her extensive travels and doubtless exacerbated by her rigorous lecturing schedule, Sheldon continued her voyages to new territories, including an 1894 expedition to the Belgian Congo, and eventually four trips around the world. She retired in England and died in London on 10 February 1939. (KR)

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TRAILL, CATHERINE PARR STRICKLAND, 1802-1899

Catherine Parr Traill was born January 9, 1802 in London, England to Thomas Strickland and Elizabeth Homer Strickland. Her parents named her after the last wife of King Henry the VIII, Katherine Parr, who was also a Strickland. While still very young, Catherine and her family moved to Waveney because of her father's poor health.

Living in the country gave Catherine the opportunity to explore the outdoors. She often accompanied her father on fishing trips. One of her prized possessions later in life was her father's first edition copy of "The Compleat Angler". Mrs. Strickland was an avid supporter of Isaak Walton, the conservationist. Since Mr. Strickland was his daughters' primary teacher and encouraged them to read, it is reasonable to assume that young Catherine was exposed to these ideas about nature as well.

Catherine began to write short stories in her early teenage years. She only shared these stories with two of her sisters. After the death of her father in 1818, Catherine moved to the family's second home in Norwich with her two older sisters and her two brothers, who attended school there. She continued to read and write in Norwich. A friend of the family found one of Catherine's stories and submitted it to Harris the Publisher in London. "The Blind Highland Piper, and Other Tales" was published and Catherine was hired to write further stories for Harris.

Catherine married Thomas Traill on May 13, 1832. As an officer in the Royal Scottish Army, Traill was entitled to a land grant in Canada. The Traills left for the New World a week after their wedding. They settled near the town of Peterborough. During their marriage, Mrs. Traill gave birth to nine children. She was survived by only four: two sons and two daughters.

Catherine Traill wrote stories about her observations of the world around her. As described by Mary Agnes FitzGibbon in the biographical sketch prefacing the 1894 edition of Pearls and Pebbles, "[Mrs. Traill's] love of flowers and for natural history in general was a continual source of pleasure and eventually profit." (Pearls and Pebbles, pg. xxx) The marketability of her work provided a substantial portion of the Traill's income and was particularly important when Mr. Traill died in 1857 soon after the destruction of their home by fire. She continued to send many of her stories and collections back to England for publication and for use by other naturalist writers until her death in 1899. (AF)

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WORKMAN, FANNY BULLOCK, 1859-1925

Fanny Bullock Workman, an aggressive traveler, suffragist, mountaineer, and surveyor, epitomized the New Woman of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. First making their mark as early bicycle tourists, Workman and her husband, William Hunter Workman, turned to mountain climbing later in their travel careers.

Workman was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on 8 January 1859. A child of privilege (her father was a former governor of Massachusetts), she married William in 1881, who retired from his medical practice soon after. The couple had one child, Rachel, born in 1884, who later became a geologist. In 1889 William and Fanny began their decades of professional travel by a soujourn to Europe, settling semi-permanently in Germany by 1890. 1890 also marked the beginning of the Workmans' bicycle tours. Bicycling was in the late-nineteenth century an exciting new form of transportation, one which the Workmans would use for the next ten years of travels.

First cycling across the back roads of Europe and charting new pathways for fellow cyclists, the Workmans published their first travel book in 1895, after a tour of Algeria (published here). The couple then turned to the Far East, cycling across Asian countries and the Indian Subcontinent in 1897 and 1898, and publishing more travel accounts as they went.

By 1898 another type of travel excursion was emerging: mountain climbing. For the rest of their careers Fanny and William molded themselves into quasi-professional mountaineers and surveyors, eventually completing eight Himalayan expeditions between 1898 and 1912.

The Workmans were members of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and they earned medals of honor from an additional ten European geographical societies. Furthermore, they claimed to "discover" new mountain terrain, to chart newly corrected maps, and to set altitude records for women. Subsequent years and research, however, have suggested the Workmans experienced problems with accuracy, and that most of their discoveries, maps, and records are in fact suspect. Nevertheless, the Workmans, and especially Fanny (the real impetus behind the travels and the travel books), published numerous popular works and enjoyed popularity on the lecture circuit as well. They were not, however, so popular among natives of the Himalayan regions--they lacked, as Middleton puts it, "sympathy or even common-sense understanding of local people," resulting in great "local unpopularity" (84).

In 1917 the Workmans moved to southern France, and Fanny fell ill soon after. She suffered until her death in Cannes on 22 January 1925. (KR)

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WRIGHT, IRENE ALOHA, 1879-

Born in Lake City, Colorado on December 19, 1879, Irene Aloha Wright left her home at the age of 16 in order to explore Mexico--an adventurous undertaking for any young woman but especially for an American girl on her own in the 1890s. Worried that her daughter might find herself short of money, Wright's mother sewed $300 in gold coins into the seam of a flannel petticoat. Reminiscing about this journey many years later, Wright recalled, "Every time I found myself in need of money, I ripped out the seam, took out a coin, and then sewed it up again."

When the supply of gold coins began to run short, Wright decided to seek employment in Mexico rather than return to the United States. She found work as an English teacher for a wealthy Mexican family, a position which allowed her to study Spanish language and history in her spare time. After three years, Wright returned to Denver and was sent to a boarding school.

Following this adventure, Wright attended Virginia College for Young Ladies in Roanake and Leland Stanford Junior University, where she was awarded the A.B. in 1904. After completing her formal education, Wright was offered a job as correspondent for a New York newspaper in Cuba. This time Wright's mother accompanied her. Wright remained in Cuba for twelve years, initially working for the New York paper and later working on the Cuban News, an English-language newspaper for American readers which she launched herself. During this time, Wright also entered the field of magazine publishing, starting the Cuban Magazine, a journal of news and information for farmers.

During her residence in Cuba, Wright began researching the island's history. She became so immersed in this project that she and her mother went to Seville, Spain to continue her work at the archives of the Indies, a great repository of historical information on Latin America. Over the course of the next 22 years, Wright wrote several books on the early history of Cuba and other Caribbean nations, and compiled original reports of the early Dutch slave trade for the Dutch government. She also served as a personal representative for the Library of Congress and wrote historical essays for English, American, and Dutch magazines.

During the first World War, Wright was placed in charge of the American Office of Public Information. At this time, she started Seville's first foreign-language newspaper, The American News, which continued publication throughout the war.

Wright was in Portugal when the Spanish Civil War broke out. She returned to the United States and settled in Washington with her adopted daughter, Flor. There she worked in the National Archives, and was later transferred to the State Department. She retired from the State Department in 1953, having reached the age of compulsory retirement. The same year she was elected to a three-year term as president of the Society of Woman Geographers.

In 1950 Wright was awarded a Gold Medal by the Society of Woman Geographers for her three-volume English Voyages to the Spanish Main. She was also awarded the Royal Order of Alfonso XII by the Spanish government and the Order of Carlos Manuel Cestedes by the Cuban government. She was a fellow of the Royal Historical Society (London) and a member of the Historisch Genootschap (Utrecht). (SW)

Last update: 5.22.01