Way Makers

An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking

Kerri Andrews

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781836392040
  9781789147872
• eBook ISBN:
  9781789148190
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

The follow-up to the bestselling Wanderers, Kerri Andrews's Way Makers is the first anthology of women's writing about walking. Moving from the eighteenth century to the present day, and across poetry, letters, diaries, novels and more, this anthology traces a long tradition of women's walking literature. Walking is, for the women included in this anthology, a source of creativity and comfort; it is a means of expressing grief, longing and desire. It is also a complicated activity: it represents freedom but is also sometimes tinged with danger and fear. What cannot be denied any longer is that walking was, and continues to be, an activity full of physical and emotional significance for women: this anthology is testament to the rich literary heritage created by generations of women walker-writers over the centuries.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• INTRODUCTION
• Elizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 1746
• Frances Burney, Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World (1778)
• Ann Yearsley, ‘Clifton Hill’, from Selected Poems (1785)
• Helen Maria Williams, Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790 (1790)
• Charlotte Smith, Rural Walks: In Dialogues: Intended for the Use of Young Persons (1795)
• Mary Wollstonecraft to William Godwin, 10 September 1796
• Dorothy Wordsworth, The Alfoxden Journal (1798)
• Sarah Murray, A Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland (1799)
• Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal (1800)
• Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen, May 1801
• Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)
• Mary Shelley, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817)
• Jane Austen, Persuasion (1818)
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818)
• Dorothy Wordsworth to William Johnson, 21 October 1818
• Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, The Journal of Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, 16 May 1822
• Ellen Weeton, Miss Weeton’s Journal of a Governess (1825)
• Dorothy Wordsworth, ‘Thoughts on My Sick-Bed’ (1832)
• Charlotte Brontë to Emily Jane Brontë, 2 September 1843
• Harriet Martineau, A Year at Ambleside (1845)
• Emily Brontë, ‘Loud Without the Wind Was Roaring’, from Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)
• Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847)
• Harriet Martineau to Mr H. G. Atkinson, 7 November 1847, from Autobiography
• Christina Rossetti, ‘The Trees’ Counselling’ (1847)
• ‘Often Rebuked, yet Always Back Returning’, from Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, ed. Charlotte Brontë (1850)
• Harriet Martineau, A Complete Guide to the English Lakes (1855)
• Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856)
• Charlotte Brontë, The Professor (1857)
• Eliza Keary, ‘Through the Wood’, from Little Seal-Skin (1874)
• Kate Chopin, ‘Beyond the Bayou’ (1893)
• Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 3 September 1903, La Réole
• Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Sunday, 16 May 1915
• Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925)
• Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1927)
• Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Dorothy L. Sayers, Have His Carcase (1932)
• Nan Shepherd, ‘Summit of Coire Etchachan’, from In the Cairngorms (1934)
• Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Tuesday, 2 October 1934
• Frieda Lawrence, Not I, But the Wind . . . (1935)
• Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (1936)
• Nan Shepherd to Neil Gunn, 14 May 1940
• Anaïs Nin, ‘The Labyrinth’, from Under a Glass Bell (1944)
• Flora Thompson, Heatherley (1944)
• Jessie Kesson, ‘Blaeberry Wood’ (1945)
• Jessie Kesson, ‘To Nan Shepherd’ (1945)
• Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (1945)
• Janet Adam Smith, Mountain Holidays (1946)
• C. C. Vyvyan, Down the Rhone on Foot (1955)
• Eleanor Farjeon, Walking with Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years (1958)
• Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (1960)
• Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (1977)
• Jenny Nimmo, The Snow Spider (1986)
• Alexandra Stewart, Daughters of the Glen (1986)
• Muriel Gray, The First Fifty: Munro-Bagging Without a Beard (1991)
• Kathleen Jamie, ‘At Point of Ness’, from The Queen of Sheba (1994)
• Alice Oswald, ‘Another Westminster Bridge’, from Woods, etc. (2005)
• Gwyneth Lewis, ‘Imaginary Walks in Istanbul’, from Sparrow Tree (2011)
• Cheryl Strayed, Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found (2012)
• Linda Cracknell, Doubling Back: Ten Paths Trodden in Memory (2014)
• Linda Cracknell, ‘Assynt’s Rare Animals?’ (2015)
• Lauren Elkin, Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London (2016)
• Melissa Harrison, Rain: Four Walks in English Weather (2016)
• Helen Mort, ‘Kinder Scout’, from No Map Could Show Them (2016)
• Camille T. Dungy, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (2017)
• Kate Davis, ‘She teaches herself to walk across a limestone landscape’, from The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk (2018)
• Katherine May, The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk in the Wild to Find Her Way Home (2018)
• Raynor Winn, The Salt Path (2018)
• Nancy Gaffield, Meridian (2019)
• Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing (2019)
• Sasha Dugdale, ‘The Fall of the Rebel Angels’, from Deformations (2020)
• Anita Sethi, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain (2021)
• Polly Atkin, ‘Unwalking’, from Much With Body (2021)
• Merryn Glover, Of Stone and Sky (2021)
• Sarah Moss, The Fell (2021)
• Sonia Overall, Heavy Time (2021)
• WORKS INCLUDED
• PERMISSIONS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INDEX