author
Alice D. (Alice Dixon) Le Plongeon
1851–1910
A pioneering photographer and traveler, she helped bring the ancient Maya cities of Yucatán to wider attention through vivid writing and thousands of photographs. Her work blends adventure, early archaeology, and a strong curiosity about worlds that many readers of her time had never seen.
1 Audiobook
Queen Moo's Talisman: The Fall of the Maya Empire
by Alice D. (Alice Dixon) Le Plongeon
About the author
Born in London in 1851, Alice Dixon Le Plongeon became known as a photographer, traveler, author, and early student of the ancient Maya world. Working alongside her husband, Augustus Le Plongeon, she spent years in southern Mexico and Central America documenting sites such as Chichén Itzá and Uxmal at a time when they were still little known to many English-language readers.
She was among the first people to excavate and study those Maya sites in a systematic way, and photography was central to that work. Thousands of images connected with the Le Plongeons' fieldwork survive, showing how important visual record-making was to their research and travel writing.
Le Plongeon also wrote for general readers, turning her experiences in Yucatán into books that mixed observation, storytelling, and the excitement of discovery. Today she is remembered both for her adventurous life and for helping preserve a visual record of Maya monuments during an early period of archaeological exploration.