Unprotected Females in Sicily, Calabria, and on the Top of Mount Aetna
- London: Routledge, Warnes, and Routledge, 1859
London: Routledge, Warnes, and Routledge, 1859. First edition. Near Fine. Publisher’s purple cloth with gilt spine. Cloth expertly repaired at hinges and head and tail of spine. Pale yellow endpapers. With the bookplate of author Larry McMurtry. Foxing to verso of first plate and some toning to leaves. A near fine copy, remarkably bright and attractive, of a book that is generally scarce but rare in this condition. Octavo. xi, [1, blank], 265, 32 [publisher’s ads] pp. Complete with four lovely chromolithograph plates (including frontispiece) by Thomas Picken.
This is the second of two books by Emmeline “Emily” Lowe (ca. 1835 – 1897) on the topic of “unprotected” women travelers—that is, women who traveled without the supervision of a husband or other male relative (though wealthy European travelers typically employed local guides). Lowe had previously recorded her travels in Europe with her mother, Helen E. Lowe (d. 1882), in Unprotected Females in Norway (1857), and returned to the topic for the present work, which narrates the journey they took to Italy in late 1857. The two women proudly traveled without men, and Lowe remarked in her first book, “ladies alone get on in traveling much better than with gentlemen…men are sure to go into passions and make rows, if things are not right immediately. Should ladies have no escort with them, then every one is so civil, and trying to be of what use they can be…The only use of a gentleman in travelling is to look after the luggage, and we take care to have no luggage,” (Unprotected Females in Norway, p. 3).
OCLC records ten physical copies, only three in North America (Yale, University of Toronto, University of Alberta).
Robinson, Jane. Wayward Women, p. 117; Theakstone, John. Victorian & Edwardian Women Travellers, p. 260. Near Fine.
This is the second of two books by Emmeline “Emily” Lowe (ca. 1835 – 1897) on the topic of “unprotected” women travelers—that is, women who traveled without the supervision of a husband or other male relative (though wealthy European travelers typically employed local guides). Lowe had previously recorded her travels in Europe with her mother, Helen E. Lowe (d. 1882), in Unprotected Females in Norway (1857), and returned to the topic for the present work, which narrates the journey they took to Italy in late 1857. The two women proudly traveled without men, and Lowe remarked in her first book, “ladies alone get on in traveling much better than with gentlemen…men are sure to go into passions and make rows, if things are not right immediately. Should ladies have no escort with them, then every one is so civil, and trying to be of what use they can be…The only use of a gentleman in travelling is to look after the luggage, and we take care to have no luggage,” (Unprotected Females in Norway, p. 3).
OCLC records ten physical copies, only three in North America (Yale, University of Toronto, University of Alberta).
Robinson, Jane. Wayward Women, p. 117; Theakstone, John. Victorian & Edwardian Women Travellers, p. 260. Near Fine.