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Anderson argues that late Victorian women travel writers challenged the strict boundaries of the women’s sphere, while appearing to operate within it, and “had to negotiate the discursive boundaries of Victorian Britain’s sex-role socialization.” Defining those boundaries, not producing a definitive analysis of travel writing itself, is the author’s main goal. Her approach is cross-disciplinary and broadly based culturally. In her introduction and first chapter, Anderson draws on a range of travel writers and recent criticism of them to establish a context for examining different considerations of colonized space and place. Chapter 2 is concerned with showing how Isabella Bird’s The Golden Chersonese (1883) is both a construction of the British imperialist venture and the beginning of an undercutting of that venture. Chapters 3 and 4 examine the struggle between the individual and the identification with imperial power in Florence Dixie’s In the Land of Misfortune (1882) and the translating (or decoding) of texts, especially those of Kate Marsden. Finally, Anderson looks at dress and how clothes operate as a figuaral mode of expression. Including full notes and an extensive works-cited list, this is a book for libraries seeking to expand holdings in women’s studies. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

T. Loe, SUNY Oswego, Choice, December 2006