author

Janet B. Montgomery McGovern

An American traveler and writer, she is best known for a vivid firsthand account of Taiwan under Japanese rule and its Indigenous communities. Her work blends curiosity, field observation, and the perspective of an early 20th-century woman moving through places few Western readers knew well.

1 Audiobook

Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa

by Janet B. Montgomery McGovern

About the author

Janet B. Montgomery McGovern, also known as Janet Blair Montgomery McGovern, was an American author remembered chiefly for Among the Head-Hunters of Formosa, first published in 1922. The book grew out of a two-year stay in Formosa (now Taiwan) from 1916 to 1918 and has been described by modern publishers as both a travel narrative and an anthropological account.

Available sources suggest she was also a teacher and a traveler with a strong interest in documenting the people and places she encountered. Some records connect her with later work on Pueblo life in the American Southwest, showing that her writing ranged beyond East Asia.

Reliable biographical detail on her life is limited in the sources I could confirm, so it is safest to see her as a curious, wide-ranging observer whose surviving books preserve a distinctive early 20th-century view of cultures that many English-language readers of her time would never have encountered firsthand.