Isabella Bird | intrepid explorer

wonder | wander | world reserves our final post of the month for yet another incredible woman of history - Isabella Bird, intrepid explorer and unconventional world traveler. 

Isabella Bird (1831-1904) was an English explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist who made a remarkable series of journeys at the end of the nineteenth century.

Isabella Lucy Bird - New York Public Library

She circled the globe, climbed the Rocky Mountains, scaled a Hawaiian volcano on horseback, and snapped pictures of Asia's remote and forbidden lands. Becoming one of the most iconic female explorers of the Victorian era.

Bird was a small and frail woman who had suffered from several ailments and a spinal defect during her childhood. In 1850 she had an operation to remove a tumor from her spine. The operation was only partially successful, and she suffered from insomnia and depression.

Map of places where Isabella Bird travelled.

Her doctor recommended that she travel, and in 1854 her father gave her 100 pounds and told her she was free to go wherever she wanted. She used it to travel to North America and stayed for several months in eastern Canada and the United States.

On her return she used the letters she had written to her sister, Hennie, as the basis for her first book, The Englishwoman in America. The rest is another iconic hero immortalized in world history.