Best Travel Books:
By and For Women

Why are lists of the best travel books usually made up mostly of male authors?

Are there no - or so few - outstanding women travel writers?

Absolutely not!

Literary history is filled with the travel writing of women, some dating back to Antiquity. Most women who traveled and wrote about it were usually escorting their husbands - only recently did women start to travel unaccompanied. They rarely traveled for travel's sake, but if you search enough, you'll unearth early women's travel writing.

Rome, with layers of history
Photo: iessi via Flickr

And they were from all over the world - Japan, Afghanistan, Greece, England - wherever women traveled, they wrote.

Women's travel writing became more common as the centuries passed and women traveled more.

Bedouin village, Mauretania
Photo: Ferdinand Reus via Flickr

As travel horizons widened and rail travel expanded, women increasingly took to the road - some so adventurous they strayed far off the beaten path, lived with Bedouin tribes, crossed inhospitable mountains on muleback, or changed the course of history. The intrepid women travel writers of the 20th century are names many of us have learned to know and love. Even more recently, contemporary women travel writers of the 21st century are continually opening new doors and pushing the envelope for the rest of us.

One emerging area is that of travel guidebooks for women, written specifically with women in mind. 

Most guidebooks are written 'for everyone' though, and we would do ourselves a disfavor if we didn't use them. Go to any bookstore and you'll lose yourself. Which one to choose? I've tried to put some order into this by preparing my own travel guidebook reviews. And if you're traveling solo, as I often do, there are some excellent solo travel books for women now being published.