COLONIAL DISCOURSES

Series One: Women, Travel & Empire, 1660-1914
Part 1: Early travel accounts by women and women's experiences in India, Africa, Australasia and Canada

This project explores the twin themes of women and travel, and women and empire. This first part brings together some 121 rare printed volumes by 51 women writers, enabling scholars to explore themes such as:

• The development of women’s travel literature, 1662-1914.
• The evolution of a female aesthetic sensibility.
• The use of travel as a form of escape from traditional gender roles.
• The ideology of Empire.
• Issues of identity: contrasts between imperial settlers and first and second generation settlers who begin to develop a new national consciousness.
• Narratives of Empire and Anti-Empire. 

Key authors featured are Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Elizabeth Anspach, Eliza Fay, Maria Callcott, Emily Eden, Bithia Croker, Flora Annie Steel, Amelia Edwards, Mary Sheldon, Mary Kingsley, Mary Anne Barker, Catharine Traill, Anna Jameson, and Adeline Teskey.  Their accounts will be of value to scholars and students in classes dealing with literature, gender, anthropology, sociology and world history. It contains sources for African Studies, South and East Asian Studies, Australasian and Pacific Studies and US and European History.