author
Elizabeth Kimball Kendall
A Wellesley professor who turned scholarship into adventure, she wrote history textbooks as well as vivid travel books drawn from journeys across Europe and Asia. Her best-known work, A Wayfarer in China, captures the curiosity and independence that shaped her life.
1 Audiobook
A Wayfarer in China Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia
by Elizabeth Kimball Kendall
About the author
Born in Vermont in 1855, Elizabeth Kimball Kendall became a professor of history and political science at Wellesley College. She studied in Europe and built a career as a teacher and writer, producing school histories as well as books for general readers.
She is especially remembered for combining academic work with extensive travel. Her journeys took her through Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and those experiences fed into travel writing that aimed to make distant places feel immediate and real to readers at home.
Among her notable books is A Wayfarer in China, an account of travel across western China and Mongolia. She died in 1952, leaving behind a body of work that blends clear-minded historical teaching with an adventurous, observant style.