author
Henriette McDougall
1817–1886
A British missionary writer, teacher, and artist, she left a vivid first-hand record of life in nineteenth-century Sarawak. Her books combine travel writing, observation, and the everyday realities of mission life in Borneo.
1 Audiobook
Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak
by Henriette McDougall
About the author
Born Henriette Bunyon and often known as Harriette McDougall, she was a British missionary, teacher, artist, and author who worked in what is now Malaysia. After marrying Francis Thomas McDougall in 1843, she traveled with him to Sarawak in 1848, where he later became the first Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak.
Her writing is remembered for its direct, eyewitness view of the region and of the people she lived among. In Letters from Sarawak (1854), she described local customs, religion, and the progress of missionary work for younger readers, while Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak (1882) looked back on roughly twenty years of life there with detail, warmth, and a strong sense of place.
She was also an artist, and her watercolors add another layer to the world she described in words. Today, she is valued not only as a missionary memoirist, but also as a distinctive nineteenth-century voice on Sarawak and Borneo.