Journal of a Residence in Chile During the Year 1822: And, A Voyage from Chile to Brazil in 1823In 1821, Maria Dundas Graham sailed for South America on H.M.S. Doris, a ship sent to protect British mercantile interests in that volatile region. After her husband, the ship's captain Thomas Graham, died en route, the newly widowed Maria Graham landed in Valparaíso, Chile. Resisting all efforts to hustle her back to England, Graham, a professional writer and highly educated woman, rented herself a cottage in the Chilean--not the British--section of Valparaíso and traveled through Chile for nine months until driven out by a major earthquake and the threat of civil war. The resulting Journal of a Residence in Chile (1824) tells the gripping story of a gothic heroine in a dangerous but fascinating new land. The author has an eye for detail and a gift for storytelling, and so she creates a travel narrative with a compelling plot and vividly realized characters. Among the first travel narratives authored by a woman, Graham's Journal establishes literary strategies for travel texts to follow and shows clear differences from male narratives of the same period. The Journal, with Jennifer Hayward's illuminating new biographical and critical essays and appendices, is also invaluable for scholars and general readers interested in Latin America. Graham provides one of the few firsthand accounts in English of the independence movements in South America, meets with many of the major historical figures involved, provides detailed historical and political readings of events, and depicts Chile of the 1820s in accurate and loving detail. |
From inside the book
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... given to me by Patricia Ronzier de Lara ; I am so grateful . The College of Wooster's gen- erous research support and leave program enabled me to travel to Chile , Lon- don , Oxford , and Nether Wallop in search of Graham's letters and ...
... given this policing of women's experience , Graham's feel- ing that she was " not like other people " and her consequent difficulties of self- definition were shared by many - perhaps most — early women travelers and writers . At the ...
... ( given the silent treatment by schoolmates and teach- ers ) " for many months , " fed in isolation , and forbidden to study or read . Luck- ily , a heroine appears : the fortuitously named teacher Miss Bright , who as an intellectual ...
... given a chance to extend her residence in Brazil indefinitely : she accepted the post of governess to Maria da Gloria ( b . 1819 ; later Maria II of Portugal ) , eldest daughter of the Empress and Emperor of Brazil . Graham joked to a ...
... given by the Oxford English Dictionary . As was typical of her era and nationality , Gra- ham often spelled foreign words inaccurately and used accent marks only as the spirit moved her . I have reproduced Spanish and French quotations ...