In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World

A voyage of discovery, nature and untold histories - in the vein of Clare Wright, Edmund de Waal and Helen Macdonald.

When the first woman to circumnavigate the world completed her journey in 1775, she returned home without any fanfare at all.

Jeanne Barret, an impoverished peasant from Burgundy, disguised herself as a man and sailed on the 1766 Bougainville voyage as the naturalist’s assistant. For over two centuries, the story of who this young woman was, why she left her home to undertake such a perilous journey and what happened when she returned has been shrouded in uncertainty.

Biologist and award-winning author Danielle Clode embarks on a journey to solve the mysteries surrounding Jeanne Barret. From archives, herbariums and museums to untouched forests and open oceans, Clode’s mission takes her from France and Mauritius to the Pacific Islands and New Guinea to reveal the previously untold full story of Jeanne’s life as well as the achievements and challenges of her famous voyage.

This book is an ode to the sea, to science and to one remarkable woman who, like all explorers, charted her own course for others to follow.