FORBES, Anna.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Insulinde. First edition of Anna Forbes's account of her travels through the Dutch East Indies, to Celebes, the Moluccas, the Nutmeg Islands, and Timur. Her travels were soured by illness, but she "bore the hardships well, and wrote of them with a measure of wry amusement" (Theakstone). Forbes (1858-1922) was a zoologist who travelled across the world with her naturalist husband, Henry Ogg Forbes (1851-1932). Forbes's husband convinced her to release this work as "a woman's view of travelling in the tropics, 'the interests and pleasures, drawbacks and disappointments' of the trip with nothing of the science or serious stuff" (Robinson), following the publication of his work Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago two years earlier. Provenance: Edward Charles Stirling (1848-1919), with his bookplate on the front pastedown. Stirling was chairman of the South Australian Museum committee and eventually became an honorary director. He advocated for the rights and education of women and helped build a collection of invaluable specimens relating to aboriginal life in Australia.

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