Ida Pfeiffer

Born in Vienna in 1797, Ida Pfeiffer became one of the 19th century’s most remarkable travel writers. After years centered on family life, she began traveling widely in midlife and went on to visit places across the Middle East, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, often under difficult and dangerous conditions.

She is especially remembered for completing journeys around the world and for writing popular accounts of what she saw. Her travel books brought distant places to European readers in a direct, lively way, and helped make her an unusually celebrated woman explorer of her era.

Pfeiffer’s final journey took her to Madagascar, and she died in Vienna in 1858. Today she is remembered both for the courage of her travels and for the readable, curious spirit of her writing.