MERLIT WP2 19th Century Travelogues

How do women in the nineteenth century write about their travels as projects of self-actualisation – against the backdrop of an imperial-patriarchal culture? This project explores travelogues written by women in the long nineteenth century, specifically during the Victorian era. It considers narratives of women who crossed not only continental borders but also transgressed social norms in order to follow ambitious, highly individualist vocations. What does progress and merit (individual and collective) mean to them? What limitations do they perceive and encounter? What language and what forms do they find to write about? These are some of the central questions that shape my research.

Currently, I am exploring A lady's life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird -- probably the most well-known travel writer of my corpus --, Recollections of Tartar Steppes and their Inhabitants (1863) by Lucy Atkinson, and Isabella Frances Romer's A pilgrimage to the temples and tombs of Egypt, Nubia, and Palestine, in 1845-6 (1846; 2 vols.).

^{Isabella Lucy Bird Bishop}

^{by Benjamin Stone}
^{platinum print, July 1899}
^{8 in. x 6 1/8 in. (203 mm x 157 mm) image size}
^{Given by House of Commons Library, 1974}
^{Photographs Collection}
^{NPG x36475}

^{© National Portrait Gallery, London}

^{Isabella Frances Romer}

^{by Alfred, Count D'Orsay}
^{pencil and chalk, 1847}
^{NPG 4026(50)}

Researcher: Maxime Honinx

Associated: Marjolein Goethals