In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, travel was difficult for women. It was physically arduous, dangerous, and prohibitively expensive. Bad (or non-existent) roads, uncomfortable modes of travel, vermin-infested inns, and possible attacks by highwaymen were some of the obstacles women faced. Social prejudices against domestic obligations left behind were no less significant.

Forays into this masculine, public sphere were seen as reckless, excessively bold and even immodest. Travel was, essentially, “unsuitable for ladies.”

In spite of this, women did travel and managed to write accounts of their experiences. During the eighteenth century, many of these were upper class women of means – women such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the Countess Blessington and Lady Craven.

In the nineteenth century, technological improvements in transportation, such as steamships and railways, and the general democratization of tourism (through Cook’s Tours, for example) made travel more accessible to women. By 1850, the number of women traveling had increased exponentially.

The later Victorian period, in particular (from 1870 on), produced some of the most important names in the history of women’s travel writing: Mary Kingsley, Marianne North and Isabella Bird, to name a few. These women – for the most part, spinsters who had spent years caring for elderly parents or ailing siblings – decided, late in life, to escape the gender-defined confines of nineteenth-century womanhood by becoming professional travelers. Highly intelligent, independent, motivated by a thirst for knowledge and the Victorian drive for self-improvement, they traveled worldwide as writers, artists, botanists, zoologists, archaeologists and ethnographers. The books they wrote were tremendous popular successes, and many continue to be reprinted to this day.