A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains is a travel book by British traveler Isabella Bird, recounting her 1873 excursion to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, on the border of the US. The book is a collection of letters that Bird wrote to her sister, Henrietta, and was published in 1879 by John Murray. In 1872, Isabella Bird left England and went first to Australia, then to Hawaii, and then to the Sandwich Islands. Later that day, she sailed for the US, cutting back at San Francisco. She passed Lake Tahoe, Cheyenne, Wyoming, Estes Park, Colorado, and somewhere else in and close to the Rocky Mountains of the Colorado Region. Her aide was Rough Mountain Jim, portrayed as a desperate person, with whom she got along very well. She was the first white woman to stand on top of Longs Peak, Colorado. It was later found out that Jim was shot to death after seven months. After facing so many adventures, Isabella Bird ultimately took a train to the east.
Isabella Bird was a British author, traveller, photographer, and naturalist. She was born in England on 15 October 1831. She was sick most of her life so her doctor necessarily gave her an instruction to travel. With 100 pounds given to her by her cleric father, Bird travelled Canada and the United States. During her journeys, she wrote to her sister about her experiences and produced on that material for her first book. Bird travelled to Japan, China, Tibet, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam before returning to Britain to marry Dr. John Bishop, a surgeon. Her refined observations have been entertaining readers for over a century. She was the first woman to be chose Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society. She became one of the most popular travel writers of the 19th century. Bird is very observant, and especially for her time, very compassionate, open-minded, and well-mannered in many ways, she is accessible for the modern reader to relate to, including the wide gulf in time and culture that separate us. She died in Edinburgh on 7 October 1904.
