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EDITOR’S PREFACE

MARIANNE NORTH was an accomplished painter, knowledgeable botanist, enthusiastic traveller, and prolific diarist. Selected from three volumes—including writing about travels in almost thirty countries—the excerpts from North’s diaries in this edition cover six countries on five continents.

A marker like the one above indicates an abridgement to the text. Each chapter may not begin where Marianne North started writing or end at the close of her own diary entry. But each chapter will provide an understanding of her experiences and perhaps even make you feel that you are along with her, riding in the jampany or on the back of a mule, or walking— parasol and painting easel in hand—through the lush jungle or the dense rainforest, in search of new subjects for her canvas.

Although she was more adventurous and expressive than most, Marianne North was very much a citizen of her own time and place—a late-nineteenth-century privileged British woman, with many of the common attitudes and ways of thinking of the time. Some of these attitudes—especially in matters of race and indigenous culture—would not be acceptable today. But readers will agree that, for the most part, Marianne North approached the world in all of its diversity with an open and intelligent mind, an engaging curiosity, and a generous spirit.