author
Celia Fiennes
1662–1741
Known for riding on horseback through England at a time when very few women traveled this way, she left behind vivid notes that now offer a remarkable window into late 17th-century life. Her journeys mixed curiosity, stamina, and a sharp eye for the places and industries she encountered.
1 Audiobook
Through England on a side saddle in the time of William and Mary
by Celia Fiennes
About the author
Born in 1662, Celia Fiennes was an English traveler and writer who spent years journeying across England on horseback. She was the daughter of Nathaniel Fiennes, a Parliamentarian colonel, and she traveled widely from the 1680s into the early 1700s, recording what she saw in careful, lively detail.
Her travel writing is valued not just for its sense of movement and adventure, but for the everyday things she noticed: towns, roads, houses, gardens, customs, and local industries. Historians have found her journals especially useful because they capture social and economic life in England with unusual immediacy.
Although her journal was not published during her lifetime, it later became well known under the title Through England on a Side Saddle in the Time of William and Mary. She died in 1741, and her work remains important as one of the richest firsthand accounts of travel in England from that period.