Dr. David Livingstone, Laurence of Arabia, and Lewis and Clark are just a few of the heavyweights in the history of exploration. Their adventures in the wild were the stuff of legend, and countless publications recount their travels. But to find their female counterparts, you’d have to dig deep for even the slimmest of volumes. So that’s just what author Milbry Polk did. She picked through the backrooms of library archives and traveled to distant corners of the globe in order to piece together the stories of history’s greatest women explorers.

Along the way, she learned of women who braved the jungles of the Amazon, who traveled with cannibals in the Congo, and who overturned the mores of their society in order to explore. Polk chronicles the stories of 84 women in her book, Women of Discovery: A Celebration of Intrepid Women who Explored the World. And though many of their names and stories may be unfamiliar, she writes that "the story of women explorers is as old as time, as old as myth, and as real as memory."

Living on Earth Today Audio Feature
Women of Discovery

Buy Women of Discovery by Milbry Polk and Mary Tiegreen

Women of Discovery
Published: January 1, 2003

Our on-air broadcast.

Lorna Marshall
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Zora Neale Hurston
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The first African-American to chronicle African-American folklore and voodoo.

Lady Mary Pierrepont Wortely Montagu
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Annie Smith Peck
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Mary Kingsley
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