Bird, Isabella

Definition

Isabella Bird’s (1831–1904) transcontinental peregrinations through North America, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific region, and Australia were hailed as inspiringly intrepid. In the twenty-first century, Bird has been reinstated not only for her heroic refusal of conformity but for her prototypically Victorian qualities of energy, fortitude, and resilience.

Introduction

The life and career of Isabella Bird (1831–1904) are approximately coextensive with the Victorian period itself and have undergone similar vicissitudes of subsequent reputation. In her time, her transcontinental peregrinations through North America, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific region, and Australia were hailed as inspiringly intrepid. In the early twentieth century, Bird, like many female Victorian travellers, was mocked for an oppressive sense of propriety. Individual liberation became internalized repression, while critique of oppression became complicity with empire. In the twenty-first century,...