Isabella Bird

English women of the Victorian era aren't exactly encouraged to be outgoing. But for Isabella Bird, adventure is the elixir of life.

Being content with the idea of marriage and a sedentary life isn't in the cards for Bird. She discovers the love of traveling when doctors prescribe a trip to the Americas as the cure for depression and back pain. She loves it so much that she continues to flee British society and to embrace the "savage freedom of the wilds." She favors a grass house over more fancy accommodations and considers Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano "a region of such splendid opportunities."

This is not the life someone expects for the daughter of an Evangelical minister. Bird shuns a life of service, instead becoming one of nineteenth-century England's most famous travel writers.

Judith Jordan, a former English teacher, celebrates the life of Bird in her historical fiction "Isabella Bird." Historians, fans of nineteenth-century English literature, and feminists alike will find something of interest as they learn about what life may have been like for a woman determined to "write her own script."