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A little Intro about Isabella is: Isabella Lucy Bird was a 19th-century English explorer, writer, photographer, naturalist, and nurse. She along with Fanny Jane Butler founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar. She was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Geographical Society.Let Dig deeper in Her Life!

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Isabella was born in Boroughbridge,United Kingdom on 15 october 1831.Her Parents were Dora Lawson and Edward Bird.And she had a sister who was Henrietta Amelia Bird.She was Educated by her parents.From early childhood Isabella suffered from several health issues and her doctor suggested spending more time in the open air. In 1854 when she was around 23,Isabella traveled to The united states and stayed for several months with relatives.That was just the beginning of Isabella’s Journey

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Later she got Married to Dr.John Bishop in 1880 at the age of 49.And after that a lot of tragedies happened; Her beloved sister Henrietta died because of Typhoid.

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She explored countries all over the world including Australia, Hawaii, China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, India and Iran. She climbed mountains, trekked through jungles, and rode for thousands of miles on horseback. She even rode on elephants! Her final travels were to Morocco when she was in her 70s.

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Her observations of America, Hawaii, Korea, Japan, China and then-Malaya (a set of states on the Malay Peninsula and Singapore) made her a literary success in England and opened people's eyes and minds to these faraway countries.

Some 90 years later, Bird's works were found by a publisher named Graham Earnshaw among a bunch of classic China-related books in a bookshop called Caves in Taipei, Taiwan.

"Forty years ago, I used to buy books from Caves, among them Isabella's. The first one I read was her Japan story," Earnshaw says. "She did a very long, interesting trip around Japan and went up near Hokkaido - and it just blew me away. The sense of being with her, the experience of travelling with her, is what makes her writing so brilliant, so extraordinary, so alive."

Earnshaw has since republished a number of Bird's works. The layout and organisation of the newer Chinese Pictures, which contains 61 images by Bird, has been kept as close to the original edition as possible, with an additional foreword by Earnshaw.

"All photos and words in the original are included - not one word [has been] left out," he says. "We did it because I think anything by Isabella on China is worth keeping in the sun, and these photos are basically unknown and have value in terms of understanding China and Isabella."

Bird writes about China in The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, and The Yangtze Valley and Beyond. On both occasions, she passes through Hong Kong - once during the city's Great Fire of 1878, where she arrived, dropped her luggage off at the bishop's house, and went back out to follow the developments of the event.

She also wrote about a court and execution ground in Guangdong province in mainland China's south, the costumes of Manchurian people in the north, her travels up the Yangtze rapids, and Sichuan and Tibet.

"There were a lot of memoirs at that time that looked at things from a military perspective or a cultural perspective, but she was doing it from a humanistic perspective - that is, the people," Earnshaw says.

"She was paying attention to the people to an extent that I think it was certainly rare for those days, and allowed us to get a sense of not only the places, but the people. She had, of course, various attitudes that come out. We all have our prejudices, but she transcended them to a remarkable extent."

The China we see through Bird's eyes in Chinese Pictures is on the cusp of change. It precedes the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 , an anti-foreigner uprising, by a few years. Although she was attacked in Chengdu for being a foreigner, she was protected by the men she had hired for her travels, and she remained undeterred on her adventures.

Bird's photos provide something of a social commentary in the sense that they encapsulate the lives of ordinary Chinese and Manchurians at that time. Although she often stayed in the homes of missionaries, Bird would sometimes stay in town inns, where she was considered an object of curiosity. She photographed people staring at her in one, as well as families on the move in Manchuria, a dying coolie under a tree, and a child eating with chopsticks.

In Fuzhou, she took photos of a "baby tower", where the bodies of newborn babies were left. These children would have been from parents who were not able to afford another child, were female, or were babies that had simply died from ill health, Earnshaw says.

In Chinese Pictures, the description reads: "When a baby dies and the parents are too poor to give it a decent burial, they drop its poor little body into one of the openings in this tower. A Guild of Benevolence charges itself with the task of clearing out the tower every two to three days, burying the bodies with all religious rites and ceremony."

Chinese Pictures doesn't just have photos of people, though - it has landscape and architectural images, too.

"One of the most interesting photographs is the one that we featured on the cover," says Earnshaw. "It's a half-moon bridge at Wanzhou - then called Wanxien, and a key river port on the Yangtze ... just on the bend where the Yangtze River heads north to Chongqing and then turns east to go into the gorges and then into the Pacific ...

"At that corner is this town, and [Bird] spent quite a lot of time there. The bridge itself was mentioned by a number of other travellers and it was just the most beautiful piece of architecture. Of course, it doesn't exist any more."

Another photograph shows a child in traditional Chinese clothes eating with chopsticks. Bird's role as she travelled, says Earnshaw, was that of an observer and she wouldn't have talked much to the locals - a sentiment that was not uncommon. Foreigners in China were isolated both in terms of local society excluding them and foreigners themselves being unwilling to step into that world.

"If that were you or me today, we might have been looking to spend time getting to know the people and learn about life [there]," he says. "But she moved from one missionary household to another missionary household. She took a picture of a kid eating, but she was operating as a bystander, as an observer."

Bird was also interested in the rudimentary modes of transport used in the region. There's a photograph of a Manchurian family on the move, with the baby in a basket and the mother atop a mule. She photographed wheelbarrows, which were used to transport goods and people, too.

Perhaps one of her more disturbing images, titled the "Dying Coolie", captured one of her bearers lying with his legs crossed under a tree. The story behind the image was that he had become ill, and his fellow bearers were ready to move on and leave him behind.

Although Bird was surprised by this seemingly callous pragmatism - he was dying, thus he was of no more use - she put a wet handkerchief on his brow to soothe him, took a photograph, and then herself also abandoned him.

"Is there a difference in the end? I don't think so," Earnshaw says. "But her Christian Victorian conscience was assuaged by bothering to put a handkerchief on his brow. Good for her."

Bird also spent time in Beijing and took a photo of the Forbidden City from what would become Tiananmen Square. Her photo shows a more extensive set of royal buildings than exists today.

"You can see various gates and walls that no longer exist but give a sense of the wider Forbidden City - the home of the emperors at a time again before everything fell apart. It's one of the most instructive photographs that I've seen of the Forbidden City," Earnshaw says. "She recorded history."

Chinese Pictures: China Through the Eyes of Isabella Bird, with a foreword by Graham Earnshaw, is published by Earnshaw Books.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Journey into the past

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From mesmerising to macabre: old China photos get new life

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A republished version of 'Chinese Pictures: China Through the Eyes of Isabella Bird' contains 61 captivating images of China in the 1890s, ranging from classic architecture to dying men to a tower where poor people left dead babies.

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Isabella used to travel so much to improve her health conditions.First In 1872 she traveled to Australia but she disliked Australia so she traveled to Hawaii.Then in 1878,Isabella travelled to Japan.The trip was planned by Harry Pakes,a british diplomat who was also a consul general in Japan at that time.Isabella took Harry’s offer and worked with a sense of duty and devotion to carry out her mission.Then in 1888 she traveled to India,Tibet and Parsia.After that between 1894 to 1897 she traveled to different parts of China.In 1894 she also traveled to Korea.

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In 1888,During her trip to India,Persia and Tibet she made hospitals in Islamabad and Srinagar,in memory of her husband and sister.She wrote a lot of books when she travelled to give people around the world of the places in the world they were living in.

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Isabella didn’t had any stable Job.She used to do whatever she felt like.She went to and through every continent except Antarctica and wrote best-selling books on her journeys. Some books Isabella wrote was: (This are the most famous books she wrote)

1.Unbeaten Tracks in Japan

2.Among the Tibetans

3.The Hawaiian Archipelago

4.A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains

Many more........

In total she wrote approx 48 books.

Bird was also one of the first women admitted to the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) in 1892. Studying her life and travels can draw attention to the often ignored role of women within Victorian geography.Also she was a Photographer and used to capture pictures of different parts of the world while travelling.

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She was the first women to be made a Fellow at the Royal Geographical Society.

She was also a Naturalist.

She died in 7 october 1904.

Her last travel was to Morocco At the age of 70.

She Died when she was 73 years old.

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As you have seen in this presentation,Isabella was a really interesting person and everything she did was because she also wanted to feel normal world.She didn’t wanted to be the girl who had health problems and couldn’t do anything.She used to travel to feel happy and then she used to write to share the happiness with the world.As you may have seen in this presentation that Isabella was the first woman to be in the royal geographical society.And all of this evidence proves that not a disease nor anything can Stop her no matter what comes in the ways.Sadly,Isabella is a forgotten explorer now and a lot people don’t know a lot about her but i personally believe she was a really interesting person and the world should know more about her.

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