The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, first published in 1899, contains the account by the redoubtable Isabella Bird (now Mrs J. F. Bishop) of a journey through central China in 1896 1897. The volume focuses on her travels though the province of Szechuan and among the Man-tze of the Somo territory. Many of the areas she explored and carefully described were almost unknown to European visitors and had not been mentioned in any earlier English publications. The volume is based on journal letters and the diary written during her journey, and it is generously illustrated with photographs and Chinese...

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published her Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan in 1891, compiled from a series of letters home. Recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for physical and nervous difficulties, Bird toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Far East. After her marriage, and the death of her husband in 1886, she did missionary work in India and then, in 1890, travelled to little-known parts of Turkey, Persia and Kurdistan in the company of Major Herbert Sawyer of the Indian Army. This came to be the hardest journey of her experience, with...

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published her Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan in 1891, compiled from a series of letters home. Recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for physical and nervous difficulties, Bird toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the Far East. After her marriage, and her husband's death, she did missionary work in India and, in 1890, travelled to little-known parts of Turkey, Persia and Kurdistan. This was her most challenging journey, with extremes of temperature and harsh living conditions for the sixty-year-old, although she was...

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published Among the Tibetans in 1894 and recounts her adventures of five years earlier. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She had previously toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Sandwich Islands, and the Far East before her marriage to Dr John Bishop. After his death in 1886, Isabella resolved to travel again, although now for missionary purposes. She studied practical medicine at St Mary's Hospital in London and was baptised in a ceremony of total immersion. She...

This is an evocative account, first published in 1883, of the final expedition to the East by Isabella Bird (1831 1904), who was one of the most famous Victorian female explorers, and the first woman to be admitted to the Royal Geographical Society. The Golden Chersonese is the ancient name for the Malay Peninsula, as named by the Greek geographer and astronomer Ptolemy. The book is a collection of twenty-three letters written by Bird to her ailing sister, Henny, in Scotland. Henny died as the book was published and Bird dedicates the book of letters to her memory. As well as giving detailed...