Isabella Bird Research Articles

Disability and gender in the history of geographical exploration: Understanding Isabella Bird Bishop as a disabled geographer

AbstractStudying the life and travels of the Victorian explorer Isabella Bird Bishop offers important insights into the history of disabled people within the discipline of geography. Bird Bishop is an important figure within geography's disciplinary history, as one of the first women admitted to the Royal Geographical Society in 1892. She also had a long‐standing spinal condition that intermingled with psychological symptoms. In studying how her disability (and contemporary understandings of her body) shaped her travels, this paper shows how disability interacted with Bird Bishop's racial and gender identity in shaping where and how she travelled and how she wrote about her experiences. By drawing attention to the role that disability played in justifying her travels and the positive effect travel had on her health, this paper highlights her generally positive experiences of geographical travel as a disabled person.

A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains: An Excursion to Empowerment and Environmentalism

This article proposes a reading of Isabella Bird’s travelogue A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Moun- tains (1879) through the lens of Environmental Studies by focusing on the material and metaphorical uses of nature, scrutinizing the recurrent trope of the mountain, and paying attention to the interaction between the intrepid traveller and nature. While the adventurer deals with the difficulties of the transatlantic pilgrimage, Bird also goes beyond the tradi- tional hymn to the beauty of the landscape in order to condemn the degradation of nature. Arguably, the most valuable insights that this text has to offer beyond empowering women derive precisely from the author’s concern for nature. Bird not only composes an ode to the mountainous scenery in prose, but also an innovative manifesto, where a number of detri- mental consequences of the infamous environmental crises are anticipated well in advance.

Intercultural Legacies in Shaping the British-Korean Relations Between the 1880s and 1920s

Spanning from the late 19th to the early 20th century, the intricate dynamics between Britain and Korea reveal a multifaceted interplay often overshadowed in broad historical discourses. This article offers an exploratory glance into the multifaceted nature of the British-Korean relationship, touching upon a variety of political, economic, and cultural interactions. The study highlights the geopolitical concerns of the time, marked by Korea’s nuanced role amidst its relations with regional powers like China, Russia, and Japan and Britain’s intermittent sidelining of East Asia due to its global imperatives. The economic exchanges, while not vast, were pivotal, illustrated by the flow of Korean art to Britain and the seeding of British industries in Korea. Central to this narrative are key figures like Isabella Bird, Sir John Jordan, John McLeavy Brown, Ahn Changho, and Syngman Rhee, whose personal experiences and informal influences brought unique depth to the cross-cultural dynamics. The vibrant cultural exchanges, emphasizing both the arts and societal norms, underline the depth and resilience of the Korean-British connection. While the process of Korea’s reception of and response to Western culture took place primarily under the influence of the Japanese Empire, Korea was also unofficially incorporated into the global network of capitalism organized under the leadership of the British Empire during this period, and it is therefore academically relevant to analyze this division in line with recent trends in the study of the history of the British Empire. Looking at how the informal networks of the British Empire worked on the Korean peninsula holds significance. Ultimately, this comprehensive exploration underscores the significance of historical cultural engagements, emphasizing their relevance in today’s world of diplomacy and global collaboration. This article suggests that further research should address these issues from an intercultural perspective.

Diversifying the historical geography of exploration: Subaltern body work on British-led expeditions c.1850–1914

Knowledge production on Victorian and Edwardian expeditions depended on the embodied labour of subaltern individuals. Explorers frequently mention such work in their accounts, but they also manage their dependence on others through a variety of rhetorical techniques. I show that focusing on body work can foreground the contributions of subaltern individuals to the history of British geographical exploration. I do so through a critical reading of the published and private accounts of explorers as well as their visual sources. In focusing on these labour practices, this paper offers a new perspective on the historical geographies of exploration, attentive to subaltern contributions. More broadly, the paper encourages geographers to reflect on the embodied and caring labour on which geographical research depends and the devaluation of certain bodies and their labour. These issues are examined through new readings of three otherwise familiar case studies: Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke's Nile expeditions (1856–59 and 1860–63); Isabella Bird Bishop's travels in the Middle East, Japan, China, and Lesser Tibet (1878–1896); and Captain Scott's two Antarctic expeditions (1901–04 and 1911–13).

Victorian women travellers and amateur art collecting in Japan, 1863–1893

AbstractThe majority of interdisciplinary studies on nineteenth‐century Japonisme perpetuate an assumption that most connoisseurs of Japanese art in Victorian Britain were men. Despite recent feminist studies which have restored women to histories of private collecting and curatorship across Europe, there is a lack of consideration of how travelogues by women contributed to public discussions of Japanese art and anthropology in Victorian Britain—including accounts which complement or predate publications by celebrated connoisseurs such as A.W. Franks, James Lord Bowes, and Charles Holme. This article will examine brief passages from travelogues by Anna d’Almeida (1863), Alice Frere (1870), Isabella Bird (1880), and Mary Bickersteth (1893) which chronicle the authors' experiences purchasing ceramics and lacquerware in Japan. The women's careful attention to the history and features which distinguish valuable, antique art pieces from lesser factory productions contradicts the Victorian characterisation of female collectors as indiscriminate participants in commercial or ‘decorative’ trends. Furthermore, the women redress false Victorian conceptions of ‘Japanese’ aesthetics and report on the changing conditions of art production in post‐feudal Japan. In context with the popularity of the travel genre across classes and genders in the mid‐ and late‐nineteenth century, d’Almeida, Frere, Bird, and Bickersteth's accounts simultaneously signal their competence as discerning collectors of authentic Japanese art while providing an accessible introduction to Japanese art and aesthetics for aspiring lay‐collectors of ‘things Japanese’.

ТРАДИЦІЙНЕ ЖИТЛО НЕПРИВІЛЕЙОВАНИХ ПРОШАРКІВ КОРЕЙСЬКОГО СУСПІЛЬСТВА НА МЕЖІ XIX–XX СТОЛІТТЯ (ЗА СВІДЧЕННЯМИ ІНОЗЕМЦІВ)

Until the middle of the 19th century, the world of the Far East was almost unknown to Westerners. Travelers, missionaries, diplomats and writers from Europe and America, exploring the world of the Far East, inevitably came across buildings radically different from European views about architecture. Curved tiled and straw roofs, paper walls and high fences forming a labyrinth of city streets – all this greeted foreigners who visited Korea at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. On the eve of the annexation of Korea in 1910, states from different parts of the world fought for hegemony over the territory of the peninsula, primarily the Japanese and Russian empires. When the world monarchies fought for influence on the Korean peninsula, elements of Western architecture, such as brick temples, high buildings, asphalt streets, etc., came to Korea. However, the effects of Westernization remained too weak to change the traditional landscape of the Korean city fundamentally in the late Victorian era. Traditional Korean «hanoks» were widespread on the territory of the Korean peninsula from the rise of the Joseon dynasty (end of the XIV century) to the post-war modernization of Korea in the second half of the XX century. We find many descriptions of this type of housing in the works of Western authors of the late XIX and early XX centuries, such as the American writer Louise Jordan Miln, the British researcher Isabella Bird, the American missionary Homer Hulbert, and the Russian Orientalist Dmitriy Pozdneev. In this article, we investigated the hetero image of traditional Korean architecture of the underprivileged part of the Korean population in the works of Western authors at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries. Also, we analyzed the image of traditional Korean architecture through the point of view of travelers from Europe and the USA.

Niigata Broadcasting: Meiji Niigata as Isabella Bird Saw It

Niigata Broadcasting: Meiji Niigata as Isabella Bird Saw It

Cosmopolitanism, Comparison and Affect: Decolonising Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899)

ABSTRACT This essay reads anew Isabella Bird’s The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899) as a pedagogical project taking the reader through an ethical, affective journey that upends certain racial, cultural ideologies regarding China. Invoking concepts such as Victorian globalism and free-trade cosmopolitanism, it first examines the ways in which Bird’s interest in the China trade relates to an ethical vision of cosmopolitan community propelled by the ameliorative roles of nineteenth-century globalization. It turns then to explore the use of comparison as a humbling way of seeing self and other in the liminal space of traveling encounters. Finally, it shows the affective, liberating potency of female mobility, contributing to the rise of empowering emotions that shape productive interactions with proximate locals. This essay contributes to debates surrounding the decolonising of Victorian studies and the paradigm shift brought forth by the mobility turn in travel writing studies.

“I Wish They Were All Christians”: On Isabella Bird’s Grapplings with Indigenous Beliefs in Unbeaten Tracks in Japan

The religious aspect of Japanese life has a prominent place in Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. And her lengthy explications of the irreligious state of Japan contributed greatly in popularizing the image of the passive "Oriental" as they were quoted by those interested in disseminating knowledge on the religious plain of the “Far East.” Despite the importance of religion in Unbeaten Tracks, there are no focused studies of Bird's interpretation of Japan's indigenous religions such as Shinto and Buddhism. This study explores how Bird, even as she acknowledges Japanese modernity, demotes the Japanese to second-rate citizens in the hierarchy of peoples. The double role Japan plays as the modern subject and the “uncivilized Oriental” reveals the flexibility of the Victorian triad, and allows Bird to widen the gap between Japan and the “properly civilized” nations of the West. While there are vociferous locals who refute the premise of the triad, Bird sutures the holes they puncture in her Eurocentric narrative by using plural temporalities.

The Trap of Visibility?

Sara Mills’ influential Foucauldian study of women’s travel writing, Discourses of Difference (1991), heralded a turn from the consideration of individual female travellers as exceptions towards an analysis of the discursive pressures similarly exerted on all of them, through the awareness of normative expectations regarding the production and the reception of their writings. This article revisits panopticism in the genre by showing how travel writing reveals the intersection between the material plane (travelling) and the discursive process (writing). Through the parallel analysis of three travel narratives, Anna Jameson’s Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada (1838), Isabella Bird’s A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879), and Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa (1897), I show how their clothing and behaviour are enacted as signs of femininity for the benefit of their contemporaries, in texts whose diaristic form articulates the writing of the self and its exhibition to the public. I thus analyse how these travel narratives illustrate the intersection of the individual and the social in power relations and self-fashioning, and how their authors negotiate surveillance in gender performance.

Performing the Self through Orientalizing the Kurds in Isabella Bird’s Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan

Abstract This article fleshes out the various ways Isabella Bird performs the self in her travel account, Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891), mainly in her engagement with the Kurdish people. Deploying Judith Butler’s theory of performativity of gender, we argue that travel writing is empowering for Bird because it offers her a viable platform to perform a variety of selves through which she can voice her complicated and nuanced socio-political views and promote her image. Moreover, we contend that Bird’s representation of the Kurds and their region is informed by Orientalist ideology of the time as well as her own complex subject position. The fluidity of Bird’s identity, which is represented through performing a rich diversity of masculine and feminine selves in her account, exposes the constructed nature of gender. Bird not only undermines the prescribed gender boundaries of her time, but also demands the right for herself, as a woman writer, to be both caring and daring by playing the roles of a brave traveller, intellectual explorer, devoted Hakim, shrewd political analyst, religious commentator, and receptive ethnographer in Journeys.

Following in the Footsteps of Isabella Bird?

Alma Karlin (1889–1950), a round-the-world traveller, intellectual, and writer from Celje, Slovenia, arrived in Japan and lived in Tokyo in the early 1920s, an era which historians consider to be an interim period between the initial expansion of the Japanese Empire to mainland Asia and its end in 1945. The writer’s fascination with the land can be inferred, among other things, from a 35-page description of Japan and the Japanese in her most famous book, Einsame Weltreise. Die Tragödie einer Frau (The Odyssey of a Lonely Woman), and passages in Reiseskizzen (Travel Sketches), an earlier work. The article aims to place these travel accounts in the historical and ideological contexts of their time while highlighting some similarities and differences between the representations of the land and its people by Karlin and those by Isabella Bird (1831–1904). Although Karlin makes no explicit reference to the famous British traveller in her writing on Japan, the article demonstrates that she must have known about Bird’s book Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. It is, above all, her decision to introduce her (German) readers to topoi that were typical of Victorian women’s travel writing which suggests that Karlin partly based her image of Japan, if not even the itinerary of her journey there, on Bird’s bestselling work. Nevertheless, Karlin does not seem to have conformed to the then dominant orientalist discourses on Japan, her representations generally showing none of the Western arrogance that was so typical of her fellow travellers of both sexes.

Isabella Bird and Japan: A Reassessment, written by Kiyonori Kanasaka and translated by Nicholas Pertwee Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Revisiting Isabella Bird. New Abridged Edition with Notes and Commentaries, written by Kiyonori Kanasaka and translated by Nicholas Pertwee

Isabella Bird and Japan: A Reassessment, written by Kiyonori Kanasaka and translated by Nicholas Pertwee Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Revisiting Isabella Bird. New Abridged Edition with Notes and Commentaries, written by Kiyonori Kanasaka and translated by Nicholas Pertwee

Ellen Tanner’s Persia: A Museum Legacy Rediscovered

Ellen Georgiana Tanner (1847–1937) was among the first British women to travel solo in Persia and Mesopotamia. A published author elected to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in 1913, this article examines Tanner’s reputation in her day versus her subsequent lack of recognition. In 1894, aged forty-seven, Tanner began an intrepid journey on the caravan route through Persia on horseback, accompanied only by local guides, visiting bazaars and collecting Persian handicrafts. Tanner later donated the objects acquired during these travels to museums in the West Country, including a collection of eighty-five Persian objects to the Holburne Museum, Bath. This article examines the context of British activity in Persia in the late nineteenth century, discussing Tanner’s unpublished journal, ‘By Road and River’ (1895) in the context of a growing literature on Persia by British travellers including George Curzon and other women including Isabella Bird Bishop, Gertrude Bell, and Ella Sykes. It outlines the biographical details of Tanner’s life, exploring the factors that set Tanner apart from her contemporaries and her perspectives on Persia as a somewhat enigmatic observer. The article discusses the recognition of Tanner and other women by the RGS. It discusses the history of collecting Qajar art for Britain’s museums, particularly of Robert Murdoch Smith and his role in growing the V&amp;A’s holdings of Persian art. It outlines Tanner’s collecting of Persian handicrafts from Isfahan, Yezd, Shiraz, and other centres of production for the Holburne. It explores what we know of her impetus to collect, her particular interest in textiles, and the growth of interest in historic Persia, including Tanner’s part in the wholesale purchasing of historic Persian artefacts. The final section explores Tanner’s forgotten legacy at the Holburne Museum in the context of a renewed interest in rediscovering the stories of the women whose collections shaped late Victorian and early Edwardian museum collections. It argues that Tanner’s identity and the contents of her collections may account for her subsequent disappearance from institutional memory until a 2018 research project.<br>

Los problemas políticos de Irán desde el punto de vista de las mujeres viajeras en la era Nasseri

El objetivo de este estudio fue analizar los problemas políticos de Irán desde el punto de vista de las mujeres viajeras en la era Nasseri. Esta investigación se ha realizado mediante el método descriptivo y mediante el estudio de trabajos escritos e históricos. Los investigadores han extraído material examinando libros, artículos y escritos históricos. Asimismo, se recopila e soluciona los problemas de los pasajeros. Los resultados muestran que durante la Era Qajar, debido a la posición estratégica de Irán y el Golfo Pérsico, esta región fue de particular interés para las potencias internacionales superiores; por lo tanto, viajaban a Irán viajeros, estadistas, embajadores y comerciantes de muchos países europeos y no europeos. En estas delegaciones y grupos políticos extranjeros también hubo figuras femeninas, entre ellas Lady Sheil, Jane Dieulafoy, Gertrude Bell, Madame Wolfson, Isabella Bird Bishop y Carla Serena. Algunas de estas mujeres llegaron a Irán como miembros de delegaciones políticas y otras con fines turísticos o económicos. Con respecto a su estatus y posición, proporcionaron a los funcionarios de Qajar informes en los que abordaban los problemas políticos de Irán, como el fracaso del gobierno en la gestión de la salud pública y la justicia, el manejo de la inseguridad, la corrupción económica generalizada entre los estadistas y otras autoridades del gobierno de Qajar, opresiones, y similares. Según los resultados, se puede decir que la mayoría de estos problemas están relacionados con la estructura interna de Irán así como con la cultura iraní y algunas costumbres de esa época.

A Victorian Lady in the Land of the Rising Sun:&#x0D; the Image of Japan in Isabella Bird’s «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan»

The article is devoted to the image of Japan and the Japanese in the book «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan» by Isabella Bird, a famous British traveler, a member of the Royal Geographical Society, an author of a number of works written during her many travels. In April, 1878 the Victorian woman arrived in&#x0D; the Land of the Rising Sun. In the search for the «real» Japan, she made her way through the countryside, in places where no European had ever set foot. The traveler, accompanied by a guide, visited many places untouched by foreigners, including Yozo (Hokkaido). The writer reflected the results of her impressions,&#x0D; observations and research in letters to her sister. They became the basis of her work «Unbeaten Tracks in Japan», which was created later. Throughout the XIX century, the British Empire expanded its borders,&#x0D; seized new territories and sought to strengthen its influence in other countries. For Japan, it was a period of political, economic and cultural upheavals. It was the time of an active clash with a foreign culture and rapid development. The&#x0D; Land of the Rising Sun entered the arena of international relations that, of&#x0D; course, attracted the Europeans’ attention.&#x0D; This article primarily examines Miss Bird’s perception of Japan, her assessment of culture, politics, art, the Japanese’s life, their characters. An important factor is the comparison of the image of «fabulous» Japan, which was created outside Japan, and the real Japan, where the writer traveled.

Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive

Nineteenth Century Literary Society is drawn from archive of the House of John Murray publishing company, held by the National Library of Scotland. The family-run firm, with Scottish roots, spanned seven generations and flourished in London from 1768 until 2002. John Murray is especially remarkable for publishing seminal English-language works of the 19th century, including those by Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Charles Lyell, and Samuel Smiles, the father of self-help. The largest collection of Lord Byron’s private writings and manuscripts, assembled by the publisher, form a large part of the resource. Women writers feature prominently in the John Murray’s collection, including Jane Austen, Isabella Bird, Elizabeth Eastlake, and Caroline Lamb.

"Estes park is mine": Isabella Bird's Periodical Publications about the Rocky Mountains

"Estes park is mine": Isabella Bird's Periodical Publications about the Rocky Mountains

Wandering: An Essay on Histories, Genders, Mobilities, and Forms

Wandering: An Essay on Histories, Genders, Mobilities, and Forms

American Slavery Through the Eyes of British Women Travelers in the First Half of the 19th Century

My paper investigates 19th-century travel writing by British women visiting America: texts by such authors as Frances Trollope, Isabella Bird, or Frances Kemble. I analyze to what extent these travelers’ gender influences their view of race. On the one hand, as Tim Youngs stresses, there seems to be very little difference between male and female travel writing in the 19th century, as women, in order to be accepted by their audience, needed to mimic men’s style (135). On the other hand, women writers occasionally mention their gender, as for example Trollope, who explains that she is not competent enough to speak on political matters, which is why she wishes to limit herself only to domestic issues. This provision, however, may be seen as a mere performance of a conventional obligation, since it does not prevent Trollope from expressing her opinions on American democracy. Moreover, Jenny Sharpe shows how Victorian Englishwomen are trapped between a social role of superiority and inferiority, possessing “a dominant position of race and a subordinate one of gender” (11). This makes the female authors believe that as women they owe to the oppressed people more sympathy than their male compatriots. My paper discusses female writing about the United States in order to see how these writers navigate their position of superiority/inferiority.