Isabella Bird - More Than A Female Explorer

Keeping with my female inspirations for Women's History Month we are going to talk about Isabella Bird this week. Isabella Bird is not only an explorer but she is a writer/author, photographer and naturalist. She also made strides in travel as the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. I guess we can kind of consider her the first travel blogger!

Isabella was born in 1831 in Boroughbridge Hall, Yorkshire but moved around a lot with her family due to her father's poor health. When she was young she was outspoken and would say what was on her mind. While she was outspoken she was also frail, suffered from headaches, insomnia and a spinal complaint. Her doctor suggested an open air life to help with her ails.

In 1854, when she was 23 the opportunity to go to America arose. She accompanied her cousins to their family home on a sea voyage to the Unites States. The descriptive letters that she sent home to her fathers about America formed the basis for her first book An Englishwoman In America. Years later she went to Australia (not her favorite place) and then she fell in love with Hawaii which prompted her second book.

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Bird moved to Colorado in 1873 because she heard the air would be great for her ailments. When she got to Colorado, she rode 800 miles throughout the Rocky Mountains. Something I have noticed being repeated throughout all these female explorer stories: Bird was criticized for the way she rode a horse and her riding clothes being called "masculine" by a Times review. She was very angry about this and I honestly can't blame her! While in Colorado she wrote many letters to her sister which composed her fourth and probably most famous book A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.

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When Bird's sister died she came home to Edinburgh (where she stayed when she wasn't traveling). At that time she was 50 and accepted a proposal from her sister's physician Dr. John Bishop. After 5 years of marriage, he passed away and 2 years later she recovered from scarlet fever. John Bishop had left a large sum of funds to Bird and she decided to study medicine. She felt her earlier travels has been for fun and she wasn't gaining much from them so she decided she would travel as a missionary. She was nearly 60 when she took off for India where she visited missions and built a hospital with the help of Fanny Jane Butler. They founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital with the funds he left for this purpose.

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Isabella Bird's Photography

One of the most interesting things I have learned about Isabella Bird is how she revolutionized photography. As a blogger, it's so important to take photos and video to document the places you have been and Isabella did just that. She took up photography when she was in her 60's when she changed the way people saw other cultures. She showed everyday life in China, landscapes and buildings in Japan, Korea, Persia and Morocco. Her photos shows the lives of people and families in other regions so we could understand how the lived their lives.

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Birds last trip was to Morocco, after a few months of returning she fell ill and died at her home in Edinburgh. She dies in 1904 at the age of 72, her bags were packed for another trip to China that she never got to take. She is buried in Dean Cemetery.

I loved learning about Isabella Bird, she has to be one of my favorite explorers. She explored so many different places and countries all over the world like China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, India, Morocco, Iran and more. She climbed mountains and made her way through jungles. In her lifetime she took many photographs and you can see collections online. She also wrote at least 34 books, if not more about her travels to different places and her letters to family.

When she became a fellow at the Geographical Society in 1892, it was regarded an exception by the council members. They did not see women in general as able to contribute to scientific and geographical knowledgeable (ref. 1). I find her so empowering, she didn't let anything hold her back from traveling and she showed that women are capable to be explorers.

Ref. 1 - World Explorer Isabella Bird: https://mylearning.org/stories/leeds-explores-the-world/1169?