While researching the story of Nellie Bly for a work project recently I stumbled upon the story of Elisabeth Bisland, and subsequently her memoir of her travels around the world in 76 days, a challenge she reluctantly undertook at the insistence of her newspaper editor who was keen to have one of his own female journalists take on the challenge that Bly was very publicly doing, i.e. to make Jules Verne's novel Around the World in 80 Days a reality. While Bly is a much-documented, much talked about and indeed pioneering journalist of her time (her investigative journalism took her undercover in a mental institution and her report on the horrors she witnessed was incremental in changing mental health practice in USA in the late 19th century), due to Bisland arriving back in New York four days later, little is known about "the other woman". In attempt to find out more, I downloaded the ebook version of this book and think it's possibly the best £2.00 I've spent in the last year or so.

Eloquent and elegant, yet equally self-deprecating and openly humbled by her experience - one that she was honestly petrified by - following a young woman on her journey around the world, travelling solo, in the 1880s was like stepping back in time and understanding a period of history and travel that has long gone. And yet many of Bisland's observations rang true to me, recalling my own observations of the tropics, the colour of the sea and the feeling of being a million miles from home and yet very close to where you should be in life.

I urge anyone with a molecule of wanderlust in their bones to read this original and insightful account of travel in an age now long behind us.