Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews, Kathleen Jamie

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking

Over three centuries, ten remarkable women have discovered that walking is not merely a way to move through the world—it is a way of being, of seeing, of knowing themselves as writers and as human beings. From the eighteenth-century parson's daughter Elizabeth Carter, who longed to be mistaken for a vagabond wandering the wild Sussex downs, to modern walker-writers like Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed, Kerri Andrews traces the footsteps of women for whom the act of walking was essential, transformative, and often transgressive.

Some rambled for miles across the Highlands, finding freedom in solitude. Others, like Virginia Woolf, paced the streets of Bloomsbury, walking novels into being with every step. Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca Solnit—each found in walking a path to self-discovery, creative power, and a form of resistance against the constraints placed upon women's bodies and lives. Walking became their conversation with the landscape, with themselves, and with the wider world.

At 304 pages, Wanderers offers a beguiling, inspiring history of how women have used the simple act of walking to reclaim agency, solitude, and voice. It is a book about movement, freedom, and the quiet revolution of stepping out into the world on your own terms. As Raynor Winn writes, it captures "the passion and spirit of female walkers"—a dazzling conversation you won't want to leave.