Description

The inspiring story of five women who set out to explore the furthest reaches of the globe and redefine scholarship

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Katherine Routledge, Maria Czaplicka, Winifred Blackman, Beatrice Blackwood and Barbara Freire-Marreco set out to explore the furthest reaches of the globe. Resisting pernicious sexism and misogyny, they were among the first women to study at university and went on to chart now-vanished worlds, seeking new freedoms in in the wastelands of Siberia, the uncharted interior of New Guinea, on Easter Island, and in the villages of the Nile. Yet upon their return to England, they found only loss, madness and regret waiting for them.

An extraordinary insight into women’s suffrage at the turn of the century and a revelatory study of Britain’s colonial legacy, Undreamed Shores is an extraordinary portrait of a pioneering quintet whose struggles helped usher in a brighter dawn.

Publisher Review

A deeply poignant account of five women who defied convention to pioneer female scholarship at immense personal cost. If you want to understand why there is so little historical evidence of women's intellectual achievement, read this. A devastating indictment of prejudice and how it held women back -- Madeleine Bunting Larson's close and sensitive attention... gives this book, superbly researched and winningly written, its compassionate authority as well as its storytelling zest -- Boyd Tonkin * The Arts Desk * A vivid and moving history, sensitively told and rigorously researched. -- Sarah Moss Engrossing, humbling and immensely enjoyable. These five courageous pioneers not only braved extreme conditions and heart-stopping dangers in remote lands, but also the prejudice and hostility of a male-dominated world. Their extraordinary lives are uplifting and tragic in equal measure, and Larson unfolds their story with her customary blend of scholarly insight and page-turning verve -- Wendy Moore An absorbing biography of five extraordinary people - the hidden heroines of anthropology - which raises some intriguing questions about their era, and ours -- Jane Robinson, author of Ladies Can't Climb Ladders Absorbing... With this tender and luminously written work, Larson has convincingly vindicated [the women's] careers * Rana Mitter, Literary Review * Larson's subjects aren't as well-known as they deserve to be... The expansiveness and meticulousness of Larson's research deserves applause * Lucy Scholes, Daily Telegraph * An extraordinarily well-crafted, many-layered and captivating book, in which the author makes the amount of research that underlies its chapters seem effortless -- Felix Haas * World Literature Today * Enthralling... the first generation of professional female anthropologists faced far more prejudice back home than they ever did out in the field -- Kathryn Hughes * Guardian * Undreamed Shores is a compelling group biography... This is a beautifully written and convincing book that is deeply sympathetic to the difficulties encountered by this first generation of British women anthropologists. It reveals much about how their work at the time was compromised by the myriad ways in which they, and the people they studied, depended on the colonial infrastructure * TLS *