A curious life for a lady: The story of Isabella Bird, a remarkable victorian traveller

"It is hard to recall another woman in any age or country who traveled as widely, saw so much, and who left so perceptive a record of what she saw," says Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin in an introduction to one of Isabella Bird's books. Bird was the premier woman traveler of the Victorian age and author Pat Barr competently tells the story of her life. Isabella Bird, a short, plump English gentlewoman of unimpeachable character, acquired an incurable wanderlust about age 40 and during the next 30 years traveled and wrote books about her visits to Hawaii, Colorado, Japan, Malaya, India, Persia, Korea, and China. Isabella traveled mostly by herself, except for interpreters and local helpers. She sought out the lonely places of the world in long journeys that were near epics of adventure and hardship. At home in Scotland she was frail; on the trail she was as hardy as a bristlecone pine. The author gets most of her material directly from Isabella's many books of her travels plus an earlier biographer. Lacking in depth, "Curious Life" makes up for it with easy to read, well-organized writing, letting Isabella Bird tell much of the story with quotes from her books and letters. Reading this biography can be a substitute for reading Isabella's books, some of which run to a formidable 600 pages. However, I recommend reading "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains" by Bird which is a classic of Western Americana. It is from this book and her letters that the author has reconstructed the interesting tale of Isabella and her romance in Colorado in 1873 with a charming desperado named "Rocky Mountain Jim" Nugent. Jim wooed 41-year old Isabella and almost won her heart but, conscious of the proprieties, she resisted his entreaties and moved along to other adventures -- apparently without surrendering her virtue. Drat! Jim was killed in a gunfight not long after Isabella left Colorado -- the victim one might imagine of a broken heart. Smallchief