"BY 1890 MRS. BISHOP'S FAME WAS FULLY ESTABLISHED": MRS. BISHOP'S 1891 ILLUSTRATED JOURNEYS IN PERSIA AND KURDISTAN

(PERSIA) (KURDISTAN) BISHOP, Mrs. (Isabella L. Bird). Journeys in Persia and Kurdistan. Including a Summer in the Upper Karun Region and a Visit to the Nestorian Rayahs. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1891. Two volumes. Octavo, original blue patterned cloth.

First American edition of renowned world traveler Isabella Bird's fascinating narrative of her journeys in Persia and Kurdistan, with folding map of her route in Volume II and 36 wood-engraved illustrations (13 full-page), in the original cloth.

After traveling extensively in the Rocky Mountains, the Hawaiian islands, Japan, India and Tibet (and publishing books on all these travels), "her next project was to ride across little known parts of Turkey and Persia, to visit Christian outposts and the ancient communities of the Armenians and Nestorians in Kurdistan. She fell in with Major Herbert Sawyer of the Indian army. Her reputation as a traveler must have preceded her, for the tough officer of 38 agreed to set off with the widow of 60 (said to be in poor health). On 21 January 1890 they left Baghdad for Tehran on the roughest journey in her experience. It took them 45 days, through driving and drifting snow, sheltering at night in overcrowded and filthy caravanserai. So impressed was Sawyer with his companion's courage and efficiency that he took her with him on his official journey among the Bakhtiari tribespeople of south-west Persia. 'Very hot and the atmosphere thievish,' was Major Sawyer's verdict, as they rode for three months over wild country: he only once mentions his companion, 'when Mrs Bishop was so threatened with up-raised sticks and shouts that she had to draw her revolver' (Sawyer, 67). Isabella helped him in his survey work, and, with her medicine chest (presented by Burroughs and Wellcome), tended the local people. Three months completed Sawyer's work, and they parted good friends. She rode north for the Black Sea to end a journey recorded in Travels in Persia and Kurdistan (1891). By 1890 Mrs Bishop's fame was fully established. She addressed the British Association in 1891, 1892, and 1898, and was made fellow of the Scottish Geographical Society in 1891 and of the Royal Geographical Society, to which no lady had previously been admitted, in 1892" (ODNB). Preceded by the London edition issued the same year. Bookseller label.

A near-fine copy in the original cloth.