Customer Reviews

No Place for a Lady: Tales of Adventurous Women Travelers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hodgson has created a number of artistic books, full of extraordinary illustrations, fanciful tales a la' Nick Bantock. But Hodgson has established her own niche, mined her own particular vein of creativity, beautifully stylized and visually compelling.

In No Place for a Lady, the author has combined her definitive artistic style with a series of female adventures, travels undertaken by women drawn to broadening their cultural horizons from Russia to Africa to Japan. These women have one thing in common: an insatiable curiosity to see the world. Covering the 17-19th Centuries, these women come either from a bored middle-class or are of the upper class, indulging their unremitting wanderlust.

There are women in exile, those in search of a place where the fair sex will be treated with dignity rather than contempt, others avoiding the reality of their travails and seekers on religious pilgrimages. Throughout their journeys, such women exhibit exceptional bravery and a willingness to endure inconvenience and discomfort for the sake of traveling. The ladies are educated and self-confident, predominately British.

The wide range of personalities found in No Place for a Lady, show a common spirit, energy and endurance. Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, prefers Italy, as does Mme. Anne Louise Germaine de Stael, an outspoken intellectual and novelist. Others, like French Violoncellist Lise Christiani braves Siberia, a musician determined to perform at the court of St. Petersburg in 1849 "to make her fortune". A number of female travelers visit Egypt by the 1840's, if only to write later about their inconvenience and discomfort in widely published diaries. Of these, Sophia Poole includes bits of history, economics and edited correspondence, hoping for broader audience appeal when her journal is printed. Frances Trollope spends four years in the United States, traveling widely across the landscape, energetically writing of American "boorishness".

Throughout, full-page sepia illustrations add to the Victorian flavor of this book, as well as four-color maps and illustrations, all of which make a fascinating journal of lady-adventurers. Hodgson's tales mix exotic locales with that special fastidiousness that attends these ladies, in language that is precise and ladylike, tramping boldly across continents few adventurous women have seen before. Luan Gaines/ 2003.

I love a beautifully-made book, and Hodgson's treasure of a tome is just wonderful. Not only are the women she documents worthy companions for an evening by the fire as you dine on exotic fruit and sweetmeats, but the illustrations are so sumptuous that you may accidentally be swept away.

Please oh please give this one to a housebound friend for Christmas!

For the first 50 pages or so, the author, talks about different ladies and different travel facts in practically every other sentence. With her method it's more like you are reading a dictionary than a novel. Because there is so much history compacted into a few pages, you never quite get engulfed in the story of the moment. Instead, you are given the name of each woman and the book(s) she wrote and only a tiny bit about her travels.

At the beginning I rated the book a 2. However, the author changed her style in the later pages and the book moved up to a 3 and finally an 4 with my looking forward to reading it in the evening. In fact if I read it again, I'd probably enjoy it more and increase the ratings.

As the story progresses, she elaborates on the travels of some of the women so that you can get a better understanding of the hardships and in some cases, the enjoyment, they endured. I've learned that the Sandwich Islands are Hawaii and that many women were really pioneers in the way they traveled back then. Many endured diseases and actually died during travel. Others weren't lone travelers; sometimes traveling as a result of a husband's wishes. However, I really can't remember a single female name because there were so many. Those who are interested in historical facts, names and dates would love this book.

"No Place for a Lady" turned out to be a very interesting read but did leave me wanting for more. It is extremely evident that the author did tremendous research and reading in order to produce this work. I suspect one would get more appreciation for what women travelers encountered if they read each book the author did during her research.

The Good: Quick read. Can pick it up and put it down again without getting lost. The hardcover I read had lots of beautiful illustrations and was very nicely done.

The Bad: Can be a bit dry, feels like a dissertation about European female travel writers of the nineteenth-century at times.

No Place For A Lady: Tales Of Adventurous Women Travellers by book designer and author Barbara Hodgson is an exciting anthology of true stories drawn from the experiences and adventures of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth century women travelers who (very much counter to the gender sterotypes of their day) traversed the world. Filled with maps, artwork, and photographs (many of them in color), No Place For A Lady is a truly fascinating read and a study of real-life adventurous women which is enthusiastically recommended for personal reading lists and academic Women's Studies reference collections.