Between 1850 and 1920 female travel and travel writing underwent an explosion. It was an exciting period in the history of travel, a golden age. Transportation had improved but mass tourism had not yet robbed journeys of their aura of adventure. Although British women were at the forefront, a number of intrepid Spanish women also participated in this new era of women's travel and travel writing. They transcended general societal limitations imposed on Spanish women at a time when the refrain "la mujer en casa, y con la pata quebrada" described most of their female compatriots, who suffered from legal constraints, lack of education, a husband's dictates, or little or no money of their own.
Spanish Women Travelers, 1850-1920: From Tierra del Fuego to the Land of the Midnight Sun analyzes the travels and the travel writings of eleven extraordinary women: Emilia Pardo Bazán, Carmen de Burgos, Rosario de Acuña, Carolina Coronado, Emilia Serrano, Eva Canel, Fernán Caballero, Princesses Paz and Eulalia de Borbón, Sofia Casanova, and Mother María de Jesús Güell. These Spanish women travelers climbed mountain peaks in their native country, traveled by horseback in the Amazon, observed the Indians of Tierra del Fuego, suffered from el soroche [altitude sickness] in the Andes, admired the midnight sun in Norway, traveled to the missions fields in Sub-Saharan Africa, and reported on wars in Europe and North Africa, to mention only a few of their accomplishments. The goal of Spanish Women Travelers is to acquaint English-speaking readers with the narratives of these remarkable women whose works have not been available in translation. The analyses of their travel narratives and the role of travel in their lives is accompanied by many long excepts translated into English for the first time.
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