author
Beatrice Larned Massey
An early motoring traveler with a sharp eye for the comic side of adventure, she turned a cross-country drive into a lively portrait of the United States in the 1910s. Her best-known book captures both the hardships and the thrill of long-distance travel when cars were still changing how Americans saw the country.
1 Audiobook
It might have been worse : a motor trip from coast to coast
by Beatrice Larned Massey
About the author
Beatrice Larned Massey is known for It Might Have Been Worse: A Motor Trip from Coast to Coast, a travel narrative published in 1920. The book follows a journey across the United States by automobile and has been preserved by sources including Project Gutenberg, the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Internet Archive.
Her surviving public profile appears to be quite limited, and I could not confirm many personal biographical details from reliable sources available online. What is clear is that her writing belongs to the early age of motor travel, when a coast-to-coast trip was still unusual enough to feel adventurous, unpredictable, and worth documenting for other readers.
That makes her work especially appealing today: it offers not just a travel story, but a window into a moment when roads, cars, and tourism were beginning to reshape everyday American life.