Writing by Women Travellers of Nineteenth Century UK

This course explores the cultural discoveries and travel adventures of a selection of nineteenth century British women who both travelled and wrote. In the nineteenth century, women of the British bourgeoisie were expected to lead domestic existences, in reality increasing numbers of women were moving out into the world, some were even travelling around the world. Women travelled as tourists and companions of their husbands, but they also travelled as professional writers, social researchers, and missionaries. This course examines a broad selection of different women writers: Harriet Martineau (Society in America; Eastern Life Present and Past), Anna Brownell Jameson (Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada), Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake (A Residence on the Shores of the Baltic), Lilias Trotter (Parables of the Cross), Charlotte Canning (The Story of Two Noble Lives), Mary Carpenter (Six Months in India), Isabella Bird (Among the Tibetans).