Trying to Find a Common Thread for the Women Who Went Round the World

Writing about different people in different eras, with very different stories to tell… when I mentioned the idea for my latest book to my agent and my publisher, I wasn’t greeted with overwhelming excitement.

But I knew this book just had to be written. This year, 2025, is the 250^th anniversary of the very first woman to go right round the world. While many schools teach about Christopher Columbus and Lewis and Clarke, who in America has heard of Jeanne Baret? She had a fabulous story to tell; she wasn’t just the very first woman to go round the world, she also dressed as a man and broke the law by going on a French ship; when she discovered the Bougainvillea plant for the western world, she named the plant after the ship’s captain and so managed to escape arrest.

But this extraordinary story of Jeanne, including how she ended up with an unexplained fortune, was just the beginning. Researching other women who achieved real firsts in going round the world, I quickly realized there were 10 or 11 mainly unknown women who had achieved real records in circumnavigations and who really needed to have their stories told and properly recorded for history.

The problem was how to do it.

The women had absolutely nothing in common. Some were wealthy, some had been born into abject poverty; some were young when they made their journeys; others were middled aged or more. There was a beautiful sophisticated young Englishwoman who immersed herself in fine writing and poetry before heading off to Tolstoy’s Russia before inadvertently becoming the very first woman to travel round the world by train and there was the down-to-earth, middle-aged American woman who ran a heavy dirty anvil making factory in New Jersey before innocently deciding to see the Taj Mahal and then ending up to become the very first woman ever to drive right round the world.

Even worse was the time period to be covered in the book. The very first record breaker in women’s round the world travel was in 1740; the first woman to go round the world in space, the final record to be broken, was in 1963… a period between the two of them that covers well over 200 years. How could I collect these disparate people and stories and turn them into one coherent book?

During my research, I kept looking for a common thread. Did all the women have a challenging childhood; did they, through widowhood or remaining single, end up on their own before they made their extraordinary journeys? Even with the best imagination possible, there was absolutely no common track running through any of it.

My agent had concern that a book simply featuring 10 or so very different women would be confusing and lack flow and while I was determined to tell the stories of these brave, exciting women, I did understand his concern. I knew each story would have to have its own flavor; writing about the tragic early life of the woman who ended up in prison after declaring all races were equal in the 18^th century was in total contrast to the hugely funny story of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland and their hilarious race around the world in 1889.

In the end I decided there were two key threads here; one of course was that the stories all concerned women; but secondly each story highlighted huge developments in society. I decided if a running theme underlying the book was the steady progression of development in society and especially in transport, then that could possibly hold the book together.

To ensure this worked, I made the decision to start each chapter with a short overview of the time period and the developments referred to in the following story. The introduction to each chapter was generally no longer than around 150 words long, but each gave a brief overview of the period and a vignette of life at the time. So while the book is an entertaining read of extraordinary record breaking women, it also includes a wealth of fascinating little snippets from history; how in the early 19th century the United States were fighting the Barbary wars in north Africa and Napoleon was stomping into Vienna; the excitement of the introduction of the first steam passenger ships crossing the Atlantic; the introduction of the safety bicycle in 1885 and how it was taken up enthusiastically all over America; how Canada’s Blackfoot First Nation people opposed the building of the first rail track across their land until Blackfoot chief Crowfoot was given a free lifetime pass; the short introductions cover a wealth of fascinating and in some cases new information about society and times many of us have all but forgotten.

Once I worked on this idea and started putting it together, my publisher became very enthusiastic. Finally, when completed the book, not only was it felt this idea held all the diverse stories together, but they in fact added tremendous strength to the book, offering a wealth of fascinating history facts to complement the intriguing stories of these women travellers.

Now, for future projects, I won’t let problems of connectivity hold me back. With a wider approach as well as creative thinking, a book can stray from the normal pattern and still work really well. And with early sales breaking all targets, adding real creativity to a nonfiction book can be the way to go.