Isabella Bird

Isabella Lucy Bishop FRGS (née Bird; 15 October 1831 – 7 October 1904) was an English explorer, writer, photographer and naturalist.^[1][2][3] Alongside fellow Englishwoman Fanny Jane Butler, she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar in modern-day Kashmir.^[4] She was also the first woman to be elected as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.^[5]

In 2020 Kiyonori Kasanaka wrote that "Bird remains better known in Japan today than in her home country of Britain".^[6]

Isabella Bird was born on 15 October 1831 at Boroughbridge Hall in Yorkshire.^[1] She was the daughter of Dora Lawson and the Rev. Edward Bird, a clergyman.^[1] She had a younger sister, Henrietta.

Bird spent much of her childhood moving between parishes as her father took up new clerical posts. In 1832, the family relocated to Maidenhead, and two years later to Tattenhall in Cheshire, where her sister Henrietta was born.^[7] In 1842, they moved again to St Thomas's in Birmingham after her father's opposition to Sunday labour led to a decline in his congregation. A further move followed in 1848, when the family lived for a time in Eastbourne before settling in Wyton in Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire).^[7]

From an early age, Bird was known for her independence and outspokenness. At the age of six, she reportedly confronted the local MP, Sir Malpas de Grey Tatton Egerton, during an election campaign, asking whether he had complimented her sister in order to win her father's vote.^[7]

Her only education came from her parents: her father was a keen botanist who instructed Bird in flora, and her mother taught her daughters an eclectic mix of subjects. Bird became an avid reader.^[7] However, her "bright intelligence, [and] an extreme curiosity as to the world outside, made it impossible for her brain and her nature generally to be narrowed and stiffened by the strictly evangelical atmosphere of her childhood".^[8] Isabella's first publication at the age of 16 was a pamphlet addressing free trade versus protectionism, after which she continued writing articles for various periodicals.^[5]

From early childhood, Bird experienced poor health, including a spinal condition, chronic headaches, and insomnia. Medical advice recommended an outdoor lifestyle,^[1] and she learned to ride from an early age and later to row.

In 1850, while still in her late teens, a fibrous tumour was removed from near her spine. Although the operation brought some relief, she continued to experience recurring illness, including fatigue and insomnia. In an effort to improve her condition, her family spent six successive summers in Scotland.^[7]

Doctors later advised a sea voyage, a recommendation that proved decisive. In 1854, in her early twenties, Bird travelled to the United States with relatives, marking the beginning of her life of travel. Her father "gave her [£]100 and leave to stay away as long as it lasted".^[7] The letters she wrote during this journey formed the basis of her first book, An Englishwoman in America (1856),^[9] published by John Murray. Her publisher, Murray, became both her long-term publisher and a close personal friend.^[10]

Bird left Britain again in 1872, going initially to Australia, which she disliked, and then to Hawaii (known in Europe as the Sandwich Islands), her love for which prompted her second book (published three years later). While there, she climbed Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.^[11] She then moved on to Colorado, where she had heard the air was excellent for the infirm. Dressed practically and riding not sidesaddle but frontwards like a man (though she threatened to sue the Times for saying she dressed like one), she covered over 800 miles in the Rocky Mountains in 1873. Her letters to her sister, first printed in the magazine The Leisure Hour,^[11] comprised Bird's fourth and perhaps most famous book, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.

Bird's time in the Rockies was enlivened especially by her acquaintance with Jim Nugent, "Rocky Mountain Jim", a textbook outlaw with one eye and an affinity for violence and poetry. "A man any woman might love but no sane woman would marry", Bird declared in a section excised from her letters before their publication. Nugent also seemed captivated by the independent-minded Bird, but she ultimately left the Rockies and her "dear desperado". Nugent was shot dead less than a year later. Bird and Jim is a restaurant in Estes Park, Colorado named in their honor.

At home, Bird again found herself pursued, this time by Dr John Bishop, an Edinburgh surgeon in his thirties. She got interested in Japan through John Francis Campbell's "My Circular Notes, 1876", and asked the advice of Colin Alexander McVean, former chief surveyor of Japan's Survey Office, in February 1878, then went travelling again, this time to Asia: Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, and Malaya. When her sister Henrietta Amelia Bird died of typhoid in 1880, Bird accepted John Bishop's marriage proposal. They were married in February 1881, and later that year she was awarded the Royal Order of Kapiolani by King Kalākaua of Hawaii.^[1] Bird's health took a severe turn for the worse but, other than a spell of scarlet fever in 1888, it recovered following John Bishop's death in 1886, at which point she inherited a large amount of disposable income. Feeling that her earlier travels had been hopelessly dilettante, Bird studied medicine and resolved to travel as a missionary. Despite being nearly 60 years of age, she set off for India.

Arriving on the subcontinent in February 1889, Bird visited missions in India, visited Ladakh on the borders of Tibet, and then travelled in Iran, Kurdistan, and Turkey. In India, the Maharajah of Kashmir gave her a piece of land on which to build a hospital with sixty beds and a dispensary for women; there she worked with Fanny Jane Butler to found the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in memory of her recently deceased husband who had left funds for this purpose in his will. The following year, she joined a group of British soldiers travelling between Baghdad and Tehran. She remained with the unit's commanding officer during his survey work in the region, armed with her revolver and a medicine chest supplied – in possibly an early example of corporate sponsorship – by Henry Wellcome's company in London. In 1891, she travelled through Baluchistan to Iran and Armenia, exploring the source of the Karun River, and later that year she gave a speech in a committee room of the House of Commons on the persecution of Christians in Kurdistan, on which she had made representations to the Grand Vizier of the Turkish Empire.

Like most other European explorers of her generation, Bird employed large labour forces that did much of the work of transporting her. For instance, in China, she was carried 1,200 miles across the country by a changing group of Chinese men.^[12]

Featured in journals and magazines for decades, Bird had, by then, become a household name. In 1890, she became the first woman to be awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Two years later, she became the first woman allowed to join the Royal Geographical Society.^[13] She was elected to membership of the Royal Photographic Society on 12 January 1897. Her final great journey took place in 1897, when she travelled up the Yangtze and Han rivers in China and Korea, respectively. Later still, she went to Morocco, where she travelled among the Berbers and had to use a ladder to mount her black stallion, a gift from the Sultan.^[11]

A few months after returning from a trip to Morocco, Bird fell ill and died at her home on 16 Melville Street,^[14] Edinburgh on 7 October 1904. She was buried with her family in Dean Cemetery in the west of the city. The grave lies in the small curved southern section, near the small path which divides it in two. She was planning another trip to China at the time of her death.

Institutional and professional recognition

• Awarded the Royal Order of Kapiolani by King Kalākaua of Hawaii, 1881^[1]
• Became the first woman to receive Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, 1890^[15]
• Became the first woman admitted as a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, 1892^[15]
• Elected to the Royal Photographic Society, 12 January 1897^[15]
• Inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame, 1985^[16]

Commemoration and historical memory

• The Life of Isabella Bird, Mrs Bishop, the first biography by Anne M. Stoddart, published 1907^[17]
• Funded a clock tower at Tobermory, Isle of Mull, in memory of her sister Henrietta; designed by Edward Whymper^[17]
• Commemorated in a heritage event in Kaneyama, Japan, retracing her recorded route along the Ushu Kaido, July 2023^[18]

Cultural and creative representations

• Appears as a character in Caryl Churchill’s play Top Girls, 1982
• Central figure in the manga Isabella Bird in Wonderland (Fushigi no Kuni no Bird), with a bilingual edition beginning 2018^[19]
• Featured in the BBC Two programme Trailblazers: A Rocky Mountain Road Trip, December 2022^[20]
• Subject of Outlandish, a stage production in Hawaii dramatizing her encounters in Hilo, including with King Lunalilo, 2025^[21]
• Included in Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology, 2006^[22]

Bird's published works reflect her extensive travels across North America, the Pacific, and Asia, as well as her ongoing contributions to periodical literature.^[23][24]

• "A Lady's Winter Holiday in Ireland". Murray's Magazine. March 1888.
• Notes on Old Edinburgh. 1869.
• "Pen and Pencil Sketches Among the Outer Hebrides". The Leisure Hour. 1866.

• Chinese Pictures: Notes on Photographs Made in China. New York: C. L. Bowman. 1900.
• Korea and Her Neighbours. 1898.
• The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. J. Murray. 1899.
• Unbeaten Tracks in Japan: Travels of a Lady in the Interior of Japan. 1879.

• Among the Tibetans. Revell. 1894.
• Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. 1891.
• "Notes on Morocco". Monthly Review. 1901.
• "A Pilgrimage to Mount Sinai". The Leisure Hour. January 1886.
• "The Shadow of the Kurd". Contemporary Review. May 1891.

• The Aspects of Religion in the United States of America. 1859.
• The Englishwoman in America. John Murray. 1856.
• "The Two Atlantics". The Leisure Hour. September 1876.

• "Australia Felix: Impressions of Victoria and Melbourne". The Leisure Hour. March 1877.
• "Christianity in the Hawaiian Islands". The Sunday Magazine. August 1875.
• "Heathenism in the Hawaiian Islands". The Sunday Magazine. July 1875.
• Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, amongst the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes. 1874.
• The Hawaiian Archipelago. 1875.

• "Sketches in the Malay Peninsula". The Leisure Hour. January 1883.
• The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1883.

• A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. 1877.
• "Keble and His Hymns". The Sunday Magazine. December 1872.
• "Notes on Travel". The Leisure Hour. December 1879.
• "The Proverbs of the New Testament". The Sunday Magazine. October 1871.

• Anna Wolfrom - first female homesteader, successful businesswoman, and playwright

• Barr, Pat (1970). A Curious Life for a Lady: The Story of Isabella Bird, a Remarkable Victorian Traveller. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 9780708982402.
• Bird, Isabella Lucy. The Golden Chersonese And The Way Thither. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1883. ISBN 978-3348100298
• Gartlan, Luke Gartlan (15 April 2011). "A Complete Craze: Isabella Bird Bishop in East Asia". PhotoResearcher. Vienna: ESHPh: 13–26. ISSN 0958-2606.
• Glauber, Carole (Summer 2002). "Isabella Bird Bishop: Korea, the Yangtze Valley, and Beyond". Photo Review.

• Works by Isabella Bird at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Isabella Bird at the Internet Archive
• Works by Isabella Bird at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Bird at Open Library.
• Works by Isabella Bird listed at The Online Books Page
• Essays by Isabella Bird at Quotidiana.org
• Works at the Victorian Women Writers Project
• Isabella Lucy Bird (1898), Korea and Her Neighbours: A Narrative of Travel, with an Account of the Recent Vicissitudes and Present Position of the Country
• Short radio script, Bear Encounter at California Legacy Project
• Colorado Women's Hall of Fame Archived 15 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine
• Google Map: Isabella Bird's American Adventure- A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains