Queen of the Mountaineers

Queen of the Mountaineers
Queen of the Mountaineers

Queen of the Mountaineers

The Trailblazing Life of Fanny Bullock Workman
By Cathryn J. Prince

SPORTS & RECREATION

320 Pages, 6 x 9

Formats: PDF, Mobipocket, EPUB, Cloth

Cloth, $28.99 (CA $38.99) (US $28.99)

ISBN 9781613739556

Rights: WOR

Chicago Review Press (May 2019)

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Overview

The true story of how one of the first professional female climbers triumphed in a high stakes, male-dominated world 
Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London, whose members included Charles Darwin, Richard Francis Burton, and David Livingstone. Her books, replete with photographs, illustrations and descriptions of meteorological conditions, glaciology and the effect of high altitudes on humans, remained useful decades after their publication. Paving the way for a legion of female climbers, her legacy lives on in scholarship prizes at Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe and Bryn Mawr.
Author and journalist Cathryn J. Prince brings Fanny Bullock Workman to life and deftly shows how she negotiated the male-dominated world of alpine clubs and adventure societies as nimbly as she negotiated the deep crevasses and icy granite walls of the Himalayas. It’s the story of the role one woman played in science and exploration, in breaking boundaries and frontiers for women everywhere.

Reviews

"In Queen of the Mountaineers, Cathryn J. Prince transports readers to an era when explorers traversed continents by yak and goatskin boat, when mountains were still unmapped and unmeasured, when climbers braved the elements with rudimentary gear, and when the hard-earned, high-altitude triumphs of those like Fanny Bullock Workman were presented with the caveat the climber was a woman.” —Carolyn Porter, author of Marcel’s Letters


"Cathryn J. Prince presents legendary adventurer and climber Fanny Bullock Workman, a fascinating champion for women's rights who resisted expectation and refused to conform to gender roles. Through Fanny's fascinating story, Prince beautifully archives the heights achieved by our foremothers." —Ruta Sepetys, author of Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea
 


"This very well researched and written biography brings Fanny's trail-blazing accomplishments to a new generation of climbers—both women and men—as well as to armchair mountaineers." —Arlene Blum, author of Annapurna: A Woman's Place and Breaking Trail: A Climbing Life


"Cathryn J. Prince digs into original journals, manuscripts, and photos to reveal a woman whose ambitions broke boundaries for mountaineers in general and women climbers in particular." —Elizabeth Rynecki, author and documentary film director of Chasing Portraits
 


"[This] engaging and rigorously reported account of Fanny Bullock Workman's impressive life invites the reader to follow this brave and restless woman up the world's tallest mountains, both geological and cultural. What a read!" —Ben Montgomery, author of Grandma Gatewood's Walk and The Leper Spy


Queen of the Mountaineers will inform scholars and delight mountaineers and armchair travelers with its rich and detailed descriptions of local people, global customs, and the dangers of traveling abroad at the turn of the twentieth century.” --Foreword Reviews


“an insightful biography of the trailblazing Workman.” --Climbing

Author Biography

Cathryn J. Prince is the author of American DaredevilDeath in the Baltic, and A Professor, a President, and a Meteor. She has worked as a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor in Switzerland and in New York, where she reported on the United Nations, and is a frequent contributor to the Times of Israel. Prince lives in Weston, Connecticut.