This classic travel book details Isabella Bird's 1878 trip, where she set out alone to explore the interior of Japan - a rarity not only because of Bird's sex but because the country was virtually unknown to Westerners. The Japan she describes is not the sentimental world of Madame Butterfly but a vibrant land of real people with a complex culture and hardscrabble lives..... Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop FRGS (15 October 1831 - 7 October 1904), was a nineteenth-century English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist.With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial hospital in Srinagar.She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Bird was born on 15 October 1831 at Boroughbridge Hall, Yorkshire, the home of her maternal grandmother. Her parents were Rev Edward Bird BA (1794-1858) and his second wife, Dora Lawson (1803-1866).Boroughbridge was her father's first curacy after taking orders in 1830, and it was here he met Dora. Bird moved several times during her childhood. In 1832, Reverend Bird was appointed curate in Maidenhead, where Isabella's brother Edward was born and died in his first year.

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. An account of travels in the interior including visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the shrines of Nikkô and Isé Vol. One. PDF

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