Off the Beaten Track

by Dea Birkett

Off the Beaten Track takes the reader on a journey through three centuries of travel, in the company of such women voyagers as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vita Sackville West, Isabella Bird and Freya Stark. Not only did women from Britain travel to the Americas, Russia and Turkey, Arabia and the Middle East, Africa and South East Asia, but women from all corners of the globe also visited Britain. This book records their experiences - where they went, what they looked like, how they evoked other lands and cultures in words and images and what they brought back with them - and is illustrated throughout with portraits from the collections of the National Portrait Gallery, London, as well as paintings, drawings, photographs, objects and letters from their travels.