About the Author

Isabella Bird was born in 1831, and following a spinal operation at the age of eighteen began to travel on the advice of her doctors. She visited China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, North America, the Pacific, Persia, Morocco and numerous other places, and wrote more than a dozen books about her travels making her one of the most prolific and well-known female travel writers of the nineteenth century. In 1892, Bird was made the first woman fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She died in 1904.