A freeborn Jamaican of Creole descent, Mary Jane Grant Seacole enjoyed a remarkable life in traveling to the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, England, and the Isthmus of Panama. She is best known, however, for her travels in the Crimea during the Crimean War. After several of her applications for nursing positions were rejected, Seacole used her own funds to open a convalescent hospital for wounded British officers in the Crimea. After the war, in an attempt to recover some of her expenses, she wrote about her experiences in the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands (1857).

Although Seacole wrote only one book, she is an important figure among British travel writers because her work challenged many Victorian stereotypes about the proper role of women of color. Among the works by nineteenth-century African American women writers republished by Oxford University Press, Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands...