57 British women travel writers

Lucy Sherrard Atkinson was an English explorer and author who travelled throughout Central Asia and Siberia during the mid-19th century.

Rosemary Bailey is a British writer. She writes travel memoirs about France. In 2008 Bailey won the British Guild of Travel Writers’ award for best narrative travel book, Love and War in the Pyrenees.

Marianne Baillie (1788–1831) was an English traveller, poet and author of the 19th century, who wrote four books, two being collections of verse, and the others being descriptions of her travels in Europe.

Diana de Vere Beauclerk was an English author. She wrote Summer and Winter in Norway (1868) and True Love (1869) under the name Lady Di Beauclerk.

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. Along with T. E. Lawrence, Bell helped support the Hashemite dynasties in what is today Jordan as well as in Iraq.

Matilda Betham-Edwards was an English novelist, travel writer and Francophile, and a prolific poet, who corresponded with several well-known English male poets of the day. In addition, she wrote a number of children's books.

Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop, was a nineteenth-century British explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial hospital in Srinagar. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Antonia Bolingbroke-Kent is a British travel writer and broadcaster who specializes in solo journeys through remote regions. Her latest book, Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains, was shortlisted for the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards.

Selina Bracebridge was a British artist, medical reformer, and travel writer.

Hilary Bradt MBE is the founder of Bradt Travel Guides, a publisher which became an increasingly visible presence in the travel guide book world starting in the mid-1970s.

Anna "Annie" Brassey, Baroness Brassey was an English traveller and writer. Her bestselling book A Voyage in the Sunbeam, our Home on the Ocean for Eleven Months (1878) describes a voyage around the world.

Beatrix Timbrell Bulstrode was a British journalist and explorer. She is best known for her journey through China and Mongolia in the early twentieth century, which she wrote about in a 1920 book, A Tour in Mongolia.

Georgiana, Lady Chatterton, later Mrs Dering was an English aristocrat, traveller, and author. Her first travelogue, Rambles in the South of Ireland, was published in 1839.

Isabella "Ella" Robertson Christie was a pioneering Scottish traveller and explorer, landowner, gardener and author.

Dinah Maria Craik was an English novelist and poet. She is best remembered for her novel John Halifax, Gentleman, which presents the mid-Victorian ideals of English middle-class life.

Elizabeth, Princess Berkeley, sometimes unofficially styled Margravine of Brandenburg-Ansbach, previously Elizabeth Craven, Baroness Craven, of Hamstead Marshall, was an author and playwright, perhaps best known for her travelogues. She was the third child of the 4th Earl of Berkeley, and was born in Mayfair in the West End of London.

Maria Henrietta de la Cherois Crommelin, known as May de la Cherois Crommelin, (1850–1930) was a novelist and travel writer born in Ulster, Ireland at Carrowdore Castle in County Down. On the death of her brother, Frederick Armand, who succeeded their father Samuel Arthur Hill de la Cherois Crommelin, J.P. D.L. as head of the family, May and her sisters Evelyn and Caroline, were recognised jointly as heads of the family of de la Cherois Crommelin.

Lady Florence Caroline Dixie was a Scottish writer, war correspondent, and feminist. Her account of travelling Across Patagonia, her children's books The Young Castaways and Aniwee; or, The Warrior Queen, and her feminist utopia Gloriana; or, The Revolution of 1900 all deal with feminist themes related to girls, women, and their positions in society.

Lucie, Lady Duff-Gordon was an English author and translator who wrote as Lucie Gordon. She is best known for her Letters from Egypt, 1863–1865 (1865) and Last Letters from Egypt (1875), most of which are addressed to her husband, Alexander Duff-Gordon, and her mother, Sarah Austin. Having moved in prominent literary circles in London, she contracted tuberculosis and migrated in 1861 to South Africa for health reasons. She travelled on to Egypt in 1862 where she settled in Luxor, learnt Arabic, and wrote many letters about Egyptian culture, religion, and customs. Her letters are notable for humour, outrage at the ruling Ottomans, and many personal stories from the people around her.

Hariot Georgina Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava was a British peeress, known for her success in the role of "diplomatic wife," and for leading an initiative to improve medical care for women in British India.

Mary Edith Durham, was a British artist, anthropologist, noted Albanophile and writer who became famous for her anthropological accounts of life in Albania in the early 20th century.

Frances Minto Elliot (1820–1898) was a prolific English writer, primarily of non-fiction works on the social history of Italy, Spain, and France and travelogues. She also wrote three novels and published art criticism and gossipy, sometimes scandalous, sketches for The Art Journal, Bentley's Miscellany, and The New Monthly Magazine, often under the pseudonym, "Florentia". Largely forgotten now, she was very popular in her day, with multiple re-printings of her books in both Europe and the United States. Elliot had a wide circle of literary friends including Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins. Collins dedicated his 1872 novel, Poor Miss Finch, to her, and much of the content in Marian Holcolmbe's conversations in The Woman in White is said to be based on her.

Elizabeth Ellis was a British novelist and travel writer.

Grace Mary Ellison was a British journalist. She wrote several books about Turkey. Though not herself a trained nurse, she was founder of the French Flag Nursing Corps during World War I.

Anne Elwood was a British traveller, writer and biographer. It was claimed that she was the first woman to travel overland from Britain to India.

Celia Fiennes was an English traveller and writer. She explored England on horseback at a time when travel for its own sake was still unusual, especially for women.

Rosita Forbes, née Joan Rosita Torr, was an English travel writer, novelist and explorer. In 1920–1921 she was the first European woman to visit the Kufra Oasis in Libya, in a period when this was closed to Westerners.

Maria Graham, later Maria, Lady Callcott, was a British writer of travel books and children's books, and also an accomplished illustrator. Her observations of how earthquakes can change the land surface proved controversial, but correct.

Bethan Gwanas is a popular contemporary Welsh author, who publishes almost exclusively in the Welsh language. A prolific writer, she has had 17 titles published in the last decade. Whilst not just a fiction writer, she has written novels for teenagers and Welsh learners, though most of her recent work has been for adults.

Bessie Lyle Hatton was an English actress, playwright, journalist, and feminist, and took part in the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom.

Cicely Mary Hamilton, was an English actress, writer, journalist, suffragist and feminist, part of the struggle for women's suffrage in the United Kingdom. She is now best known for the feminist play How the Vote was Won, which sees a male anti-suffragist change his mind when the women in his life go on strike. She is also credited as author of one of the most frequently performed suffrage plays, A Pageant of Great Women (1909), which featured the character of Jane Austen as one of its "Learned Women."

Maud Doria Haviland was an English ornithologist. She was born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, married Harold Hulme Brindley, a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and died in Cambridge. Her great-grandfather, John Haviland, was a Professor of Anatomy and the first Regius Professor of Physic at the University of Cambridge to give regular courses in pathology and medicine.

Matilda Charlotte Houstoun was a British travel writer, novelist, biographer, and women's right activist. She is best known for her series of travel writings, particularly Texas and the Gulf of Mexico (1844) and Hesperos, and their observations about African-American life during the times of the Confederate Deep South. Later on, she turned her pen from novels to social reform, particularly on the rights of working class women and single mothers. During her lifetime, her best known work was Recommended to Mercy, a female-driven "yellow-back" novel published in 1862.

Adeline Paulina Irby was a British travel writer and suffragist who founded an early girls' school in Sarajevo and organized relief to thousands of refugees. The centenary of her death was commemorated throughout the former Yugoslavia where she is often referred to simply as Miss Irby.

Frances Anne "Fanny" Kemble was a notable British actress from a theatre family in the early and mid-19th century. She was a well-known and popular writer, whose published works included plays, poetry, eleven volumes of memoirs, travel writing and works about the theatre.

Mary Henrietta Kingsley was an English ethnographer, scientific writer, and explorer whose travels throughout West Africa and resulting work helped shape European perceptions of African cultures and British imperialism.

Sylvia Hope Leith-Ross was an English anthropologist and writer who worked primarily in Nigeria.

Anna Harriette Leonowens was an Anglo-Indian or Indian-born British travel writer, educator, and social activist.

Susan Antonia Dorothea Priestley Lowndes Marques OBE was an author and journalist who became a leading figure in the British community in Lisbon, Portugal.

Dame Edith Sophy Lyttelton was a British novelist, playwright, World War I-era activist and spiritualist.

Katharine Sarah Macquoid was a British novelist and travel writer, who published over 65 works. In addition to writing books, many of Macquoid's stories were published in magazines, the first story appearing in a publication called Welcome Guest, in 1859. Her first novel, A Bad Beginning: a story of a French marriage (1862), was successful. Probably her best story was Patty (1871).

Ethel Edith Mannin was a popular British novelist and travel writer, political activist and socialist. She was born in London.

Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison, CBE was a Scottish novelist and poet. Often called the doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote over 90 books of historical fiction, science fiction, travel writing and autobiography. Her husband Dick Mitchison's life peerage in 1964 entitled her to call herself Lady Mitchison, but she never did. She was appointed CBE in 1981. The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931) is seen by some as the prime 20th-century historical novel.

Judith, Lady Montefiore was a British linguist, musician, travel writer, and philanthropist. A keen traveller, she noted the distress and suffering around her, more particularly in the "Jewish Quarters" of the towns through which she passed, and was ever ready with some plan of alleviation. Her privately printed journals, threw light upon her character, and showed her to be cultured, imbued with a strong religious spirit, true to the teachings and observances of the Jewish faith, yet exhibiting the widest acceptance of those espousing other beliefs. She was quick to resent any indignity or insult that might be offered to her religion or her people. Montefiore authored the first Jewish cook book written in English.

Julia Pardoe, was an English poet, novelist, historian and traveller. Her most popular work, The City of the Sultan and Domestic Manners of the Turks (1837), presented the Turkish upper class with sympathy and humanity.

Margaret Eleanor Parker (1827–1896) was a British social activist, social reformer, and travel writer who was involved in the temperance movement. She was a founding member of the British Women's Temperance Association (BWTA) in 1876, and served as its first president. Born in England, Parker resided in Scotland. She was a delegate to the 1876 International Organisation of Good Templars (IOGT) meeting which led to the formation of the BWTA. She was also instrumental in founding the World Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU). In 1881, she founded another type of women's association, one which focused on horticulture and supply, but it did not flourish. Parker described her travels in the Eastern United States in Six Happy Months amongst the Americans (1874).

Maria Banks Riddell was a West Indies-born poet, naturalist, editor and travel writer, who was resident in Scotland and Wales. Robert Burns paid tribute to her as "a votary of the Muses".

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), which is considered an early example of science fiction. She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the philosopher and feminist activist Mary Wollstonecraft.

Clare Consuelo Sheridan, was an English sculptor, journalist and writer known primarily for creating busts for famous sitters and writing diaries recounting her worldly travels. She was a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, with whom she had enjoyed an amicable relationship, though her support for the October Revolution in 1917 caused them to break ranks politically. She enjoyed travelling around the world; and among her circle of friends were Princess Margaret of Sweden, Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Lady Diana Cooper, Vita Sackville-West and Vivien Leigh.

Agnes Elizabeth Slack or Agnes Elizabeth Saunders was a leading English Temperance advocate.

Agnes Smith Lewis (1843–1926) and Margaret Dunlop Gibson (1843–1920), nées Agnes and Margaret Smith, were Arabic, Christian Palestinian Aramaic, and Syriac language scholars. Born the twin daughters of John Smith of Irvine, Ayrshire, Scotland, they learned more than 12 languages between them, and became acclaimed scholars in their academic fields, and benefactors to the Presbyterian Church of England, especially to Westminster College, Cambridge.

Dame Freya Madeline Stark, was an Anglo-Italian explorer and travel writer. She wrote more than two dozen books on her travels in the Middle East and Afghanistan as well as several autobiographical works and essays. She was one of the first non-Arabs to travel through the southern Arabian Desert.

Lady Strangford, Emily Ann Smythe or Emily Anne Beaufort was a British illustrator, writer and nurse. There are streets named after her and permanent museum exhibits about her in Bulgaria. She established hospitals and mills to assist the Bulgarians following the April Uprising in 1876 that preceded the re-establishment of Bulgaria. She was awarded the Royal Red Cross medal by Queen Victoria for establishing another hospital in Cairo.

Dame Cicily Isabel Fairfield, known as Rebecca West, or Dame Rebecca West, was a British author, journalist, literary critic, and travel writer. An author who wrote in many genres, West reviewed books for The Times, the New York Herald Tribune, The Sunday Telegraph, and The New Republic, and she was a correspondent for The Bookman. Her major works include Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), on the history and culture of Yugoslavia; A Train of Powder (1955), her coverage of the Nuremberg trials, published originally in The New Yorker; The Meaning of Treason (1949), later The New Meaning of Treason (1964), a study of the trial of the British fascist William Joyce and others; The Return of the Soldier (1918), a modernist World War I novel; and the "Aubrey trilogy" of autobiographical novels, The Fountain Overflows (1956), This Real Night, and Cousin Rosamund (1985). Time called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947. She was made CBE in 1949, and DBE in 1959, in each case, the citation reads: "writer and literary critic". She took the pseudonym "Rebecca West" from the rebellious young heroine in Rosmersholm by Henrik Ibsen. She was a recipient of the Benson Medal.

Jane Wilson-Howarth is a British physician, lecturer and author. She has written three travel health guides, two travel narratives, a novel and a series of wildlife adventures for children. She has also contributed to anthologies of travellers tales, has written innumerable articles for non-specialist readers, and many scientific/academic papers.

Mary Wollstonecraft was an English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships at the time, received more attention than her writing. Today Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers, and feminists often cite both her life and her works as important influences.

Theresa Yelverton was an English woman who became notorious because of her involvement in the Yelverton case, a 19th-century Irish law case, which eventually resulted in a change to the law on mixed religion marriages in Ireland.