Writing on the World Stage
Isabella Bird embarked on a journey to the United States in 1854, and the letters that she sent home to her sister formed the basis of her first book, An Englishwoman in America (1856), published by her lifelong publisher and friend, John Murray. This trip would mark only the beginning of Bird's travels. Throughout her life she ventured far and wide and wrote on her vibrant experiences of foreign locales. Some of her destinations include the United States, Australia, Hawai'i, China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, India, Tibet, Turkey, Persia, Kurdistan, and Morocco.
An open-source bibliography of her travelogues include:
- The Englishwoman in America (1856)
- The Aspects of Religion in the United States of America (1859)
- Notes on Old Edinburgh (1869)
- The Hawaiian Archipelago (1875)
- A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879)
- Unbeaten Tracks in Japan vol. 1, vol. 2 (1880)
- The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither (1883)
- Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan (1891)
- Among the Tibetans (1894)
- Korea and Her Neighbours (1898)
- The Yangtze Valley and Beyond (1899)
- Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China (1900)
The map below displays the diversity of countries that Bird wrote about in both books and articles.