Perhaps best known to contemporaries as the self-proclaimed first white woman to set foot in the cannibal lands of Borneo and New Guinea, Beatrice Ethel Grimshaw enjoyed a lengthy career as an author of travel books and romance novels set in exotic locales. Equipped with an early training in journalism, Grimshaw possessed not only valuable knowledge of botany, zoology, and anthropology but also the rare ability to balance the factual and the fantastic successfully. Attentiveness to detail matched with a knack for storytelling provided an ideal voice for Grimshaw's intrepid curiosity.

Information about her early life is minimal. Born in 1871 in Cloona, County Antrim, Ireland, Grimshaw was educated at Caen, Normandy; Victoria College, Belfast; and Bedford College, London. Possessing an unusual amount of formal education for a woman of her era, Grimshaw rejected domestication at an early age. Upon graduation, she returned to live with her family in...