Untrodden Peaks and Unfrequented Valleys

In 1873, a daring Englishwoman ascends into the wild heart of the Dolomites, where jagged limestone peaks pierce clouds and villages perch on ledges that seem to defy gravity. Amelia Ann Blanford Edwards, who would later become one of the age's pioneering Egyptologists, here proves herself an equally brilliant explorer of more familiar landscapes transformed by fresh eyes. Traveling with her companion "L." after a winter in Southern Italy, she charts a route through the South Tyrol that feels less like tourism and more like discovery. Her voice is-chatty, exacting, dryly funny-and her gaze misses nothing: the particular blue of an Alpine lake, the customs of remote mountain villages, the texture of Victorian travel itself, with all its logistical dramas and small triumphs. This is travel writing before the genre calcified into formula, written by a woman who refused to wait for permission to see the world. For readers who crave the romance of old travel narratives, who want to wander somewhere beautiful through the eyes of someone who truly sees, this book is a door left open onto another century's wildest scenery.