The wife of Louis Agassiz, a famous natural scientist and Harvard professor, and one of the founders and the first president of Radcliffe College, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz was first known as a travel writer for A Journey in Brazil, which she wrote with her husband. The book was well reviewed when it came out in 1868 and was widely read by the Cambridge intelligentsia. The Agassizes' discussions of race relations in Brazil were of particular interest to their contemporary readers and reviewers and provide an intriguing window on evolving racial attitudes after the Civil War. A Journey in Brazil was translated into French and Portuguese, and new editions in English were brought out until 1909. It was republished in 1969 by Praeger.

Born in Boston on 5 December 1822, Elizabeth Cary was the second of the seven children of Mary Perkins Cary and Thomas Graves Cary, a lawyer. Soon after her birth her...