Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary

In the 1690s, a woman rode across England alone. Not in a carriage, but on horseback, sidesaddle, through forests and fields and market towns that barely knew what to make of her. Celia Fiennes was twenty-six when she began her journeys, and she kept going for decades, recording everything she saw in a diary that became one of the earliest travelogues in the English language. She traveled for her health, she says, but also because she believed every English person should know their own country. The result is a portrait of England from Cornwall to Newcastle: its cathedrals and crumbling castles, its river navigations and mining operations, its ancient forests already being cleared. Fiennes notices everything: the structure of Salisbury's streets, the quality of Newcastle's coal, the way light falls through a cathedral's windows. Her voice is practical, curious, occasionally amused by her own determination. This is England before the Enclosure Acts, before the Industrial Revolution swept it away. It is also the record of a woman who simply refused to stay home. For anyone curious about early modern daily life, or the hidden history of women who moved through the world on their own terms, this is an astonishing document.