I’ve been in rewrite mode lately and ignoring my blog. But just in time for Women’s History Month, Glynis Ridley has kindly stepped in with a guest post talking about her non-fiction adventure story The Discovery of Jeanne Baret: A Story of Science, the High Seas, and the First Woman to Circumnaviagate the Globe. I first ran across Jeanne Baret’s remarkable story in another book She Captains: Heroines and Hellions of the Sea by Joan Druett; and, yes, women have commanded navies, captained ships and served as crew long before modern times. I was delighted to have the opportunity to read Ms. Ridley’s riveting account of one these remarkable and neglected woman. Thanks to her publisher Broadway Paperbacks for providing two copies for a giveaway. (See the end of the article for details.)
Guest Post
Hello Faith. Thank you so much for inviting me to be your guest today. You asked me if I could talk about the writer’s process and my book, The Discovery of Jeanne Baret. While the book was first published in US hardback in 2010, and in paperback in 2011, I actually started thinking about it back in 2001. My husband and I had both been lucky enough to be invited to speak at a conference at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, on the subject of ideas of the exotic in the 18th century. My husband was giving a paper on two different French explorers of the Pacific: Bougainville and Laperouse, and as we were on the second leg of our journey, flying from Singapore to Sydney, he asked me if I knew that there had been a woman on Bougainville’s first French circumnavigation of the globe in 1766-69. (more…)
Historian's Notebook 