AMELIA EARHART (1898-1937)

Amelia Earhart was twice the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air: initially, in 1928, as a passenger just a year after Lindbergh's pioneering flight and then, in 1932, flying solo. On each occasion she was greeted with admiration both in her native America and in Europe; like her contemporaries Amy Johnson and Beryl Markham she was featured in all the fashionable magazines of the day as a symbol of the new independent woman: a mixture of action and allure. She had financed her passion for aviation by working as a telephone operator, shipping clerk, anything to pay for lessons, and subordinated her whole life to flying.

The list of records Amelia established reads like a catalogue of aviation history, and includes the first flights from Hawaii to California and from California to Mexico, and the American transcontinental air speed record. Any time begrudgingly spent on the ground was used to further the cause of career women like her, principally in her capacity as student adviser for women at Purdue University. In 1937, as her supreme achievement, she planned to 'girdle the globe' ina a Lockheed Electra, using the aeroplane as a sort of flying laboratory to test the biological and mechanical effects of long haul flight. All went well until the last leg of the circumnavigation when the plane, its pilot and its navigator simply vanished.

No one has ever satisfactorily proved what happened to Amelia Earhart. She was last heard of over the Pacific, just beyond Papua New Guinea, but despite extensive searches neigher wreckage nor bodies were ever found. Some said she had been shot down by the Japanese as a spy, the whole trip being one huge covert surveillance operation for the US Government. There were even reports that she had been taken prisoner and was still alive long after the Second World War. But however it ended, Amelia's career as a first generation flyer was unique, and endorsed her own opinion that women 'must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.'

Books by Amelia Earhart:

• 20 hrs.40 Min: Our Flight in the Friendship: The American Girl, First Across the Atlantic by Air, Tells her Story
  
• The Fun of It: Random Records of My Own Flying and of Women in Aviation

Books about Amelia Earhart:

• Eyewitness: The Amelia Earhart Incident (1987) by T.E. Devine and R. Daley
  
• Still Missing (1993) by S. Ware
  
• Sky Pioneer (1997) by C. Szabo
  
• Witness to the Execution: The Odyssey of Amelia Earhart (1999) by T.C. Brennan and R. Rosenbaum
  
• Biography of Amelia Earhart (1999) by S. Butler
  
• Last Flight Arranged by George Palmer Putnam (her widower)

AMELIA EDWARDS (1831-1892)

Amelia Edwards was a prolific novelist, poet, and children's historian. Her earliest travel book was published in 1862 - a children's picture book of Belgium. Soon Amelia went further afield, to northern Italy with a friend, and published a hugely popular book on the Dolomite mountains reprinted under the title A Midsummer ramble. Since there were not yet any proper roads the 'ramble' became a sort of voyage of discovery: she was hooked. A year later she arrived in Egypt - almost by accident, to get out of the European rain on a long holiday - and discovered what was to become her life's passion.

Travelling by dahabiah, a well-appointed sailing craft peculiar to the Nile, and armed with sketch-book and measuring tape, Amelia carefully recorded all she saw of the temples, graves, and monuments - even discovering a buried chapel of her own- and provided in A Thousand Miles Up The Nile the first general archaeological survey of Egypt's ruins. The book is full of historical footnotes and careful details. Amelia Edwards was responsible for founding the first chair in Egyptology (a science she helped create) at University College London, and was behind the appointment of Sir Flinders Petrie. She established herself as one of the authorities on the subject of Ancient Egypt and her book A Thousand Miles Up the Nile has remained one of the most inspiring travel books in the subject.

Books by Amelia Edwards:

• Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys: A Midsummer Ramble in the Dolomites
  
• A Thousand Miles Up the Nile
  
• Pharaohs, Fellahs and Explorers

Books about Amelia Edwards:

• Amelia Edwards, Traveller, Novelist & Egyptologist (1998) by Joan Rees

ANNA LEONOWENS (1834-1914)

In 1945, Margaret Landon wrote a book called Anna and the King of Siam. It was based on an English governess's memoirs of life with the royal family of Siam (now Thailand), and immediately caught the public imagination. A musical followed, and then a film, The King and I, starring Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner.

Anna Crawford was born in Wales in 1834. As soon as she had finished school she travelled out to join her mother and stepfather living in India, and by the time she was eighteen she had already visited the Levant with friends, started learning Sanskrit, Hindustani, Persian and Arabic and married a British major, Thomas Leonowens. After a honeymoon tour of the Decca she and her husband settled in a house on Malabar Hill, behind Bombay. In 1852 their first child died, and Anna began to grow ill. A change of climate was prescribed and the Leonowens chose Australia. It was an unhappy choice: they were shipwrecked off the Cape of Good Hope, and soon after eventually arriving in New South Wales another child was born and died. They tried London next, and then Singapore in 1856.

Two years later Anna was widowed, and forced to support her two surviving children by opening a school in Singapore for officers' children. This is what led her to the court of King Somdetch Phra Paramendr Maha Mogkut of Siam (or Rama IV) in 1862: being an educated man himself (he had been twenty-five years a monk before becoming king), and fashionable, he demanded a European education for his favourite children. Anna was heard of, investigated, and summoned. She was given space in the harem to set up her school, and presented with sixty-seven Royal children and a floating population of wives and slaves to be taught the wisdom of the West.

The next six years were spent coping with her pupils, with the capricious king, who commanded her services as private secretary, translator, and occasionally as concubine (unsuccessfully), and trying to exert that most precious of a governess' powers, a moral influence. It was an uphill task: at first Anna was frightened of the king, considering him cruel and his advisers corrupt, but she never lost the chance to petition him on behalf of downtrodden wives or slaves, and between them grew an exasperated fondness and a large respect. In 1867 Anna's health broke down again, and reluctantly she was allowed to leave. She went to America and settled there for the rest of her days, regularly corresponding with her beloved royal pupils, and watching with satisfaction the abolition of slavery, new religious freedom, and sense of human justice beginning to blossom in the country whose new king owed his education to her.

Books by Anna Leonowens:

• The English Governess at the Siamese Court: Being Recollections of Six Years in the Royal Palace at Bangkok
  
• The Romance of Siamese Harem Life
  
• Life and Travel in India: Being Recollections of a Journey Before the Days of Railroads

Books about Anna Leonowens:

• Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon
  
• Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond 'the King and I' by Leslie Smith Dow
  
• Katya & the Prince of Siam by Eileen Hunter

APHRA BEHN (1640-1689)

Aphra Behn was one of the most prolific playwrights and novelists during the reign of Charles II (1660-1685). Very little is known of her personal life, but she was a traveler and a spy as well as a writer.

During her time, there was social upheaval in England. The return of the monarchy during the period known as the Restoration, was characterized by a revival of creative thought in contrast with the previous puritan era. The theaters reopened much to the joy of the general public and there was plenty of room for a creative playwright such as Aphra to display all her talents.

Aphra also acted as a confidential agent for the British government working under the code name "Astrea". Because she spoke Dutch and French as well as English, she traveled to Surinam, a hotbed of intrigue at the time. Spanish and Dutch merchants were after the sugar and gold to be found in Surinam and spies were often hired to report on their interests.

Aphra Behn's story "Oroonoko or the Royal Slave" is full of her observations about English colonial life, the customs of African slaves and descriptions of plants and animals from the Amazon. It reads as a travelogue and an antislavery discourse, then rampant in the East Indies.

Aphra's husband was a Dutch merchant who became a courtire of King Charles II. After his death in 1665, Aphra was left in need of money and was comissioned to travel to Antwerp as a British agent to report on a suspected traitor. But Aphra was not paid for her work and she was forced to return to London at her own expense and soon after was briefly put in a debtor's prison as she had ben unable to pay her debts. After her release from prison she started writing plays which remain popular today. Her themes take up issues such as colonialism, slavery, arranged marriages and her novels have never been out of print.

Books by Aphra Behn:

• Oronoco, or the Royal Slave
  
• The Fair Jilt, or, the History of Prince Tarquin and Miranda
  
• The Histories and Novels of the late Ingenious Mrs Behn edited by C. Gildon
  

CLARE FRANCIS (b.1946)

Clare Francis' passion was sailing but until a legacy gave her enough money to buy a boat of her own, she trotted into her London office every day, wishing she could be on the sea instead. But once Gulliver G. Arrived on the scene, she left security behind and dedicated herself to the boat. Someone bet that she dared not cross the Atlantic alone in thies 32 footer - and so she did. Never again, she vowed, as she cruised off to the West Indies to recover.

However, in 1976 she let herself be persuaded to enter the Observer Royal Western Single-Handed Transatlantic Race - the subject of her first book: 125 started the race, only 73 finished. Clare came in thirteenth, and was the first woman across the line, breaking the record by three days: never, never again. But the next year she was off once more: this time as the only woman skipper in the Whitbread Round the World Race, leading a crew of eleven. After seven months at sea, they finished well, but exhausted: never again. This time Clare kept her promise. Her skills as a writer show how bigh-race sailing combines the most exhilarating and keen sensations with utter discomfort, and sublime fulfilment with gruelling hard work. For a while, at least, she ahs left such races behind and conquered two new challenges: that of best-selling novelist, and champion for sufferers - like her- of the debilitating disease myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)

Books by Clare Francis:

• or High Come Hell Water
  
• Come Wind or Weather
  

BERYL MARKHAM (1902-1986)

Beryl Markham's father had moved to Kenya in 1905 to farm in Njoro, then a wilderness beyond Nairobi, and took his three-year-old daughter with him. Growing up around horses, she early developed the skills as a trainer for which she later came to be known. Her work with horses and particularly with racing also put her in touch with members of the English upper classes, some of whom would later be her backers as she began to fly.

The big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton introduced her in Kenya to aviation and in 1933 she became the first woman and the eleventh pilot, in British East Africa to earn a commercial pilot's license. This commercial license was particularly important since she needed to work to support her expensive passion for flying. She worked as a bush pilot delivering mail and supplies to remote regions. Able to fly for hire, she spent thousands of hours exploring valleys and uplands, searching out animals for the safaris run by the famous white hunters Denys Finch-Hatton and Bror Blixen, husband of the writer Karen Blixen. In 1936 Beryl became the first person to fly alone westward across the Atlantic Ocean, which she recounted in her bestselling book West with the Night. She was and instant star lionized by the press and feted on both sides of the Atlantic. But after a friend was killed in an air race, she lost interest in flying.

After a round of public events, Beryl Markham decided to begin a new career as an author. She captured the love she felt for flying in her acclaimed memoir West with the Night. Ernest Hemingway said of her book 'She has written so well...that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer'. Beryl died back in Nairobi, where she returned at the end of the Second World War to train her horses.

Books by Beryl Markham:

• West with the Night

Books about Beryl Markham:

• Straight on Till Morning by Mary S. Lovell
  
• The Lives of Beryl Markham by Errol Trzebinski

CHRISTINA DODWELL (b.1951 )

Christina Dodwell's travels began in 1975 when, at the age of twenty-four, she dropped out of a boring round of unfulfilling jobs by answering an advertisement in a travel magazine. With a New Zealand nurse and two unknown young men, she set off in a Landrover for Nigeria to have fun and find adventure. Half-way across the Sahara Desert however, the enterprising young men managed to sell the Landrover - without telling the girls - and soon afterwards they disappeared, leaving Christina and her companion to travel on alone. Christina had never even carried a rucksack before - but she soon learned. Travels with Fortune, her account of the subsequent 3 year journey first with Lesley the nurse and then alone, reads like the best of those intrepid lady travellers' accounts of two generations back. She covered the length and breadth of Africa by any means available. She walked, she rode horses, camels and zebras, she cadged lifts on anything with a wheel or two and even spent several weeks paddling along the Congo in a dug-out canoe (only to be arrested as a spy at her eventual destination). She faced tick-bite fever, rabid jackals, and a diet at one stage of fresh blood and yoghurt with equanimity, all in the cause of discovery. Christina's later journeys in papua New Guinea, Greece, Turkey, Iran, West Africa, Siberia and Madagascar, with unchronicled visits to Greece, the USA and Mexico in between, all follow the same pattern: the books she wrote about them are discreet and sensitive, rather exhausting for the armchair traveller but obciously challenging and enriching for the real one and for those she meets. She is a real explorer and traveller.

Books by Christina Dodwell:

• Travels with Fortune: An African Adventure
  
• In Papua New Guinea
  
• The Explorer's Handbook
  
• A Traveller in China
  
• A Traveller on Horseback in Eastern Turkey and Iran
  
• Travels with Pegasus: A Microlight Journey across West Africa
  Beyond Siberia

Books about Christina Dodwell:

• Women Explorers in Africa: Christina Dodwell, Delia Akeley, Mary Kingsley, Florence Von Sass Baker, Alexandrine Tinne by Margo McLoone
  

DAISY BATES (1861-1951)

Daisy Bates relationship with the aborigines of the southern and western parts of Australia began soon after her marriage to an Australian cattle-farmer; when he died she returned to England and took up journalism before setting out again in 1899 as The Times's correspondent investigating allegations of cruelty to the aborigines by white settlers. She stayed for nearly forty years (spending half of them in a small white tent with the birds and 'little burrowing creatures of the earth´for company) learning the language, habits and needs of her adopted people. Kabbarli, they called her - "grandmother" - and she soon became well known and loved as their nurse, healer, and their gentle champion.

Daisy`s nomadic life involved several remarkable journeys. Once, she drove nearly eight hundred cattle 3,000 miles in six months, riding side-saddle all the way; another time she rode across the Great Australian Bight on a camel-buggy to attend a scientific congress in Adelaide; whenever anthropological curiosity or plain compassion called, she would answer by jamming on her hat, seizing up her brolly, and trekking wherever she was needed. As her influence began to grow - both with the dwindling aborigines and the burgeoning white Government of Australia - Daisy Bates's position as go-between became increasingly prominent, and her career reached its zenith when she was honoured (on behalf of her people, she said) by being made a Commander of the British Empire in 1933.

Books by Daisy Bates:

• The Passing of the Aborigines; A Lifetime spent among the Natives of Australia

Books about Daisy Bates:

• Daisy Bates in the Desert (1992) by Julia Blackburn
  
• Daisy Bates: The Biography of a Remarkable Victorian Woman by Elizabeth Salter

DERVLA MURPHY (b.1931)

It is tempting to think of the traditional Victorian lady traveller as a spirited spinster, whose youth is spent at home caring for her elderly, eccentric or invalid family, who nourishes her instinctive desire for self-expression by gazing at the atlas and planning imaginary journeys, and who is rewarded for her pains when at the age of thirty or so, her dependants die and suddenly she is free. All this is relevant to Dervla Murphy, one of the most joyful travellers and successful authors around. She has written books on her native Ireland, on what the English politely term 'inner-city problems', and on the nuclear arms race: she is not just a travel writer. But primarily she is, and as such her life has followed the maidenly pattern of her Victorian predecessors remarkably closely - at least, up to her second or third book. After cycling to the Himalayan foothills in a daze following her parents' death, and discharging her sense of duty at a Tibetan refugee camp for six months, she really began to explore the art of travel (becoming a cheerfully rabid travel snob in the process) and looks likely to carry on charming herself and her readers as long as her legs will carry her.

Dervla Murphy always travelled alone (except for Roz the bicycle or Jock the donkey) and rather resented 'civilized' company on her treks - until her daughter Rachel came along. When she was five, Dervla took her to southern India for Christmas, a fairly tame experience which only involved Rachel's contracting brucellosis and then being rushed to hospital with an infected foot; a year later mother led daughter along the teetering paths of the soaring Indus Valleys on a pony; they tackled the Andes when Rachel was nine and five years later backpacked and caught hepatitis together in Madagascar before plunging into the dank depths of West Africa in 1987. Rachel went on to settle - temporarily - in Africa, the continent which of all the world seems to fascinate her mother the most. Perhaps it is because there is still so much to discover and understand about its people and places: it presents a challenge. And Dervla Murphy relishes a challenge.

Books by Dervla Murphy:

• Full Tilt: Ireland to india with a Bicycle
  
• Tibetan Foothold
  
• The Waiting Land: A Spell in Nepal
  
• In Ethiopia with a Mule
  
• On a Shoestring to Coorg: An Experience of South India
  
• Where the Indus is Young: A Winter in Baltistan
  
• Wheels Within Wheels (autobiography)
  
• Eight Feet in the Andes
  
• Muddling Through in Madagascar
  
• Cameroon with Egbert
  
• Transylvania and Beyond (Rumania)
  
• The Ukimwi Road: From Kenya to Zimbabwe
  
• South from the Limpopo: Travels through South Africa
  
• Visiting Rwanda
  
• One Foot in Laos

Books about Dervla Murphy:

• Women Explorers in Asia: Susie Carson Rijnhart, Alexandra David-Neel, Lucy Atkinson, Freya Stark, Dervla Murphy by Margo McLoone