Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Visit to the Holy Land, Egypt, and Italy
Ida Laura Pfeiffer (1797–1858)
Read by Sibella Denton · 41 chapters · 11 h 04
About the book
In an age when respectable women stayed home, Ida Pfeiffer packed her bags and set out alone. Her destination was the Holy Land, followed by Egypt and Italy, and she travelled on a modest budget, relying on her own resourcefulness rather than on an entourage. Before leaving she even drew up her will, well aware of the risks a solitary woman would face on such a journey. This account of the expedition is brisk, curious and unsentimental. Pfeiffer describes pilgrim routes, desert crossings, crowded bazaars, ancient monuments and the everyday discomforts of nineteenth-century travel, always with the eye of a practical observer who is determined to see things for herself. Forty-one short sections take you from the preface through twenty chapters, each split in two, in the warm voice of a single reader. It is a lively companion for anyone who enjoys armchair travel and the story of a remarkable adventurer finding her feet.
Introduction
Ida Laura Pfeiffer (1797-1858) was an Austrian traveller who came to exploration relatively late in life. Born in Vienna, she turned to long-distance travel as an adult and went on to become one of the best-known women explorers of her century, undertaking journeys far beyond the usual European tours of the day. The present book describes one of her earliest expeditions: a trip to the Holy Land, Egypt and Italy, written up on her return and published in English in 1852 in a translation by Henry William Dulcken (1832-1894).
Travel writing by women was still unusual in this period, and Pfeiffer's narrative stands out for its plain, practical tone. She is less interested in fine phrases than in what she actually sees and what it costs to get there. Pilgrims, guides, innkeepers, fellow passengers and local officials all pass through her pages, and her record of the sights, from sacred sites to the monuments of the Nile, is mixed with frank remarks on prices, food, heat and fatigue. The book also had a practical purpose for its author: its success helped to pay for her next journey, a six-month stay in Iceland.
This recording by LibriVox volunteer Sibella Denton runs for about eleven hours and is divided into forty-one files, beginning with the preface and then taking each of the twenty chapters in two parts. It suits listeners who enjoy period travel narratives, who are curious about how journeys were made before the age of rapid transport, or who simply want to hear a determined woman describe the world as she found it. Today the book offers both a window on the Mediterranean of the 1840s and a portrait of a traveller who refused to be told where she could go.
Public domain
Ida Laura Pfeiffer died in 1858: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text