Bird, Isabella L. A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1879-80 illus., 296 p.

Isabella Lucy Bird (1831-1904) was a Victorian Englishwoman,

born in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, who authored several books

about her various travels outside of Great Britain, including

Unbeaten Tracks in Japan (1880) and The Golden Chersonese and the

Way Thither (1883). A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879),

along with these two volumes, made Bird famous, especially in

Britain, and established her reputation as an intrepid

nineteenth-century adventurer. Bird was also the first woman

elected a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Bird was a petite and frail woman, who suffered from many

disorders early in life. In 1850, at nineteen years of age, she

had growth removed from her back. The operation, only partially

successful, caused her to continue to suffer various maladies

over the course of her lifetime. Her doctor’s prescription was

for Bird to undertake travel, as a way to divert her attention

away from her infirmities. This fortuitous advice became the

impetus for Bird’s lifelong passion of traveling, the first of

which she undertook to North America, in 1854. This inaugural

trip fueled Bird's insatiable appetite for other adventures over

the years. Moreover, the trip, which she chronicled in The

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Englishwoman in America, her first published work, established

her as a successful travel book writer.

A Lady's Life was Bird’s third book published, and arguably

her most famous work. In A Lady's Life, letters are the literary

form used by Bird. These letters, seventeen in all, originally

written to her sister, Henrietta, living back in England, detail

Bird’s six-month journey through the western US, including

Colorado, in 1873. Bird, a single woman in her early forties at

the time, traveled without companions and rode frontwards, not

sidesaddle, like most women of her day, covering more than 800

miles in the wilderness of the Rockies, the majority of which she

completed in winter.

Her series of letters to her sister paints an exquisite

portrait of the natural beauty of the Rockies, the character of

people she came upon, and their way of life living in the

mountains, as well as her encounter with “Mountain Jim” Nugent, a

rugged trapper and scout, with whom she was enamored from the

first day the two met. Bird’s time in Colorado seems to have been

brightened by her association with Nugent, just as his life was

by his relationship with her. Unfortunately, a year after Bird

returned to England, Nugent was shot and killed back in Colorado.

A Lady's Life begins with Bird’s arrival in San Francisco.

From there, she went by train to Truckee, and then traveled alone

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by horseback to Lake Tahoe, eventually reaching Estes Park,

Colorado. Bird’s narrative to Este Park is told in such glorious

detail, especially her description of the area’s remarkable

beauty, notably its snow-capped mountains, readers cannot help

but feel they are actually viewing it with their own eyes. While

there are many things to be gleaned from reading A Lady's Life,

the most important take away is the author’s message about the

ephemeral quality of life.

The historical significance of A Lady's Life is the book’s

probable role in raising public awareness of the wilderness and

the need for its continued preservation. As the first work

popularizing a tourist’s experience traveling in the wilderness,

the volume was the catalyst for other tourists undertaking

similar adventures; thereby ushering in the modern conservation

movement. I highly recommend this excellent book to other

students.

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