Isabella Bird

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IB , well-known Victorian lady traveller, is remembered primarily for her adventures in Canada, America, the Near East, and Asia. During her many travels she kept diaries and wrote letters to her sister Henrietta, and these formed the basis for her highly popular travel books.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research.
166: 31
She also wrote for periodicals on a wide range of matters: on religious issues, on social topics and contemporary politics, such as the land troubles in Ireland and Scotland.
Print of Isabella Bird, full face, looking ahead with a closed expression, wearing a scarf and hat over a coat.

Milestones

15 October 1831

IB was born at Boroughbridge Hall in Yorkshire, where her maternal grandmother lived.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research.
166: 30
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

2 September 1873

IB dated the first of the letters to her sister Henrietta that later formed the basis for her best-known work, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, 1879.
Bird, Isabella. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. J. Murray.
1
Checkland, Olive. Isabella Bird and ’A Woman’s Right to Do What She Can Do Well’. Scottish Cultural Press.
ix
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
2722 (1879): 845-7

October 1879

IB 's best-known work, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains reached print, six years after she wrote the first of the letters that compose it.
Bird, Isabella. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. J. Murray.
1
Checkland, Olive. Isabella Bird and ’A Woman’s Right to Do What She Can Do Well’. Scottish Cultural Press.
ix
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
2722 (1879): 845-7

7 October 1904

IB died in Edinburgh.
Kaye, Evelyn. Amazing Traveler, Isabella Bird: The Biography of a Victorian Adventurer. Blue Penguin Publications.
208
Checkland, Olive. Isabella Bird and ’A Woman’s Right to Do What She Can Do Well’. Scottish Cultural Press.
xi

Biography

Childhood and Family

15 October 1831

IB was born at Boroughbridge Hall in Yorkshire, where her maternal grandmother lived.
Brothers, Barbara, and Julia Gergits, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 166. Gale Research.
166: 30
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.

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