Ethel Brilliana Tweedie, or Mrs. Alec Tweedie, as she signed her work, was a pioneering and prolific female journalist, travel writer, biographer, and historian. She wrote or edited more than twenty books, many of which relate her experiences in traveling--often to exotic places under conditions few women, or men, of her time were prepared to face. She visited the United States, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Mexico, Sicily, the Middle East, India, Egypt, Italy, Greece, China, and a troubled Russia. She was a tireless advocate of women's rights, particularly of a woman's right to vote. Yet some of her other views betray colonialist, sometimes elitist attitudes that, although they might offend modern readers, no doubt indicate well the ways that many of the educated British upper middle classes thought. Tweedie's books are carefully researched and illustrated, sometimes with her own artwork or photographs, and are full of vivid detail.

Her...