This is a collection of women’s travel writings, including work by Joan Didion, Edith Wharton, Mildred Cable, Willa Cather, Isak Dinesen, and others. In wry, lyrical, and sometimes wistful voices, they write of disguising themselves as men for safety, of longing for family left behind or falling in love with people met along the way, and of places as diverse as icy Himalayan passes and dusty American pioneer towns, the darkly wooded Siberian landscape and the lavender-covered hills of Provence. Yet even as their voices, experiences, and paths vary, they share with one another–and with us as readers–reflections upon their gender as it is illuminated by unfamiliar surroundings. Edited and with an Introduction by Mary Morris, in collaboration with Larry O'Connor. Contributors and writings include:

Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Flora Tristan, Peregrinations of a Pariah

Frances Trollope, from Domestic Manners of the Americans

Eliza Farnham, from Life in Prairie Land

Isabella Bird, from A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains

Margaret Fountaine, from Love Among the Butterflies

Gertrude Bell, from The Desert and the Sown

Edith Wharton, from In Morocco

Willa Cather, from Willa Cather in Europe

Isak Dinesen, from Out of Africa

Kate O'Brien, from Farewell Spain

Rebecca West, from Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Ella Maillart, from The Cruel Way

Emily Hahn, from Times and Places

M.F.K. Fisher, from Long Ago in France

Joan Didion, from The White Album

Christina Dodwell, from Travels with Fortune: An African Adventure

Annie Dillard, from Teaching a Stone to Talk

Gwendolyn MacEwen, from Noman’s Land