A Curious Life for a Lady

Isabella Bird was a woman of remarkable gifts. In 1872, at the age of forty, this rather earnest daughter of a country parson abandoned the rectory nest and began her pioneering journeys to some of the most inhospitable corners of the world. Undismayed by discomfort or danger she was to spend almost thirty years travelling - to the Rocky Mountains, the Sandwich Isles, to Japan, Malaya, Kashmir and Tibet, to Persia, Korea and China - where an indomitable spirit, an unassuming cordiality and, above all, a limitless capacity for being interested won her universal welcome. Her accounts of her experiences became best-selling books and established for Isabella Bird a reputation as one of the great travel writers of her day. 'Miss Barr has her measure. She and Miss Bird are well suited. The style of both is fresh, energetic, visual, making an enchanting book.' Evening Standard 'Rich and riotous as her intrepid heroine moves at the speed of a silent movie through landscapes lusher than any technicolour.' Times Literary Supplement 'A rare book.' Sunday Telegraph

Pat Barr was born in Norwich and read English at Birmingham University and University College, London. She lived for three years in Japan where her interest in Isabella Bird was first kindled. Her first two books, The Coming of the Barbarians and The Deer Cry Pavilion have both been reissued by Faber Finds and are about western settlements in nineteenth-century Japan. To China with Love, The Memsahibs and Taming the Jungle followed A Curious Life for a Lady and she then turned her hand to fiction with the immensely successful Chinese Alice and Uncut Jade.