Way Makers

Kerri Andrews is Reader in Women's Literature and Textual Editing at Edge Hill University. She is the author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking and has written for The Guardian, Trail magazine and others. She lives in Peebles, Scotland.

• INTRODUCTION by Kerri AndrewsElizabeth Carter to Catherine Talbot, 1746Frances Burney, Evelina; or, The History of a Young Lady's Entrance Into the World (1778)Ann Yearsley, 'Clifton Hill', from Selected Poems (1785)Helen Maria Williams, Letters Written in France, in the Summer 1790 (1790)Charlotte Smith, Rural Walks: In Dialogues: Intended for the Use of Young Persons (1795)Mary Wollstonecraft to William Godwin, 10 September 1796Dorothy Wordsworth, The Alfoxden Journal (1798)Sarah Murray, Companion and Useful Guide to the Beauties of Scotland (1799)Dorothy Wordsworth, The Grasmere Journal (1800)Jane Austen to Cassandra AustenJane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (1813)Mary Shelley, History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a Part of France, Switzerland, Germany and Holland (1817)Jane Austen, Persuasion (1817)Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)Dorothy Wordsworth to William Johnson, 21 October 1818Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, The Journal of Sarah Stoddart Hazlitt, 16 May 1822Ellen Weeton, Miss Weeton's Journal of a Governess (1825)Dorothy Wordsworth, 'Thoughts on My Sick-Bed' (1832)Charlotte Bronte to Emily Jane Bronte, 2 September 1843Harriet Martineau, A Year at Ambleside (1845)Emily Bronte, 'Loud Without the Wind was Roaring', from Poems, by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846)Christina Rossetti, 'The Trees' Counselling' (1847)Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1847)Harriet Martineau to Mr H. G. Atkinson, 7 November 1847, from Autobiography'Often Rebuked, yet Always Back Returning', from Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey, ed. Charlotte Bronte (1850)Harriet Martineau, A Complete Guide to the English Lakes (1855)Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh (1856)Charlotte Bronte, The Professor (1857)Eliza Keary, 'Through the Wood', from Little Seal-Skin (1874)Kate Chopin, 'Beyond the Bayou' (1893)Gwen John to Ursula Tyrwhitt, 3 September 1903, La ReoleKatherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield, Sunday, 16 May 1915Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway (1925Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (1927)Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting: A London Adventure (1927)Nan Shepherd, 'Summit of Coire Etchachan', from In the Cairngorms (1934)Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Tuesday, 2 October 1934Frieda Lawrence, 'Not I, But the Wind . . .' (1935)Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show (1936)Nan Shepherd to Neil Gunn, 14 May 1940Flora Thompson, Heatherley (1944)Jessie Kesson, 'Blaeberry Wood' (1945)Jessie Kesson, 'To Nan Shepherd' (1945)Flora Thompson, Lark Rise to Candleford (1945)Janet Adam Smith, Mountain Holidays (1946)Anais Nin, 'The Labyrinth', from Under a Glass Bell (1948)C. C. Vyvyan, Down the Rhone on Foot (1955)Eleanor Farjeon, Walking with Edward Thomas (1958)Simone de Beauvoir, The Prime of Life, trans. Peter Green (1960)Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (1977)Jenny Nimmo, The Snow Spider (1986)Alexandra Stewart, Daughters of the Glen (1986)Muriel Gray, The First Fifty: Munro-Bagging Without A Beard (1991)Kathleen Jamie, 'At Point of Ness', from The Queen of Sheba (1994)Alice Oswald, 'Another Westminster Bridge', from Woods, etc (2005)Gwyneth Lewis, 'Imaginary Walks in Istanbul', from Sparrow Tree (2011)Cheryl Strayed, Wild: A Journey from Lost to Found (2012)Linda Cracknell, Doubling Back: Ten Paths Trodden in Memory (2014)Linda Cracknell, 'Assynt's Rare Animals?' (2015)Lauren Elkin, Flaneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London (2016)Melissa Harrison, Rain: Four Walks in English Weather (2016)Helen Mort, 'Kinder Scout', from No Map Could Show Them (2016)Camille T. Dungy, Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (2017)Kate Davis, 'She teaches herself to walk across a limestone landscape', from The Girl Who Forgets How to Walk (2018)Katherine May, The Electricity of Every Living Thing (2018)Raynor Winn, The Salt Path (2018)Nancy Gaffield, Meridian (2019)Kathleen Jamie, Surfacing (2019)Anita Sethi, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain (2021)Sasha Dugdale, 'The Fall of the Rebel Angels', from Deformations (2020)Sarah Moss, The Fell (2021)Polly Atkin, 'Unwalking', from Much With Body (2021)Sonia Overall, Heavy Time (2021)Merryn Glover, Of Stone and Sky (2021)WORKS INCLUDEDPERMISSIONSACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

"Way Makers offers a wonderful array of excerpts from prose and poetry spanning 400 years, assembled by Kerri Andrews. Women walk for necessity as well as fun, to see the world, rejoice in nature and experience the awe of new vistas. Overall these pieces conjure an exhilarating sense of the freedom conferred on women by walking, despite the dangers and challenges." - Mary Blanche Ridge, The Tablet"It was while researching her bestselling 2021 non-fiction book, Wanderers: A History of Women Walking, that Kerri Andrews realised there was no anthology dedicated to the subject . . . Her answer is Way Makers, which lays claim to being 'the first anthology of women's writing about walking' . . . The book includes extracts from novels, letters, journals, guidebooks, essays, poetry and even 'the occasional play'. Importantly, it covers female writers from 'a range of social, racial and bodily backgrounds' and the walks they make physically and in their minds . . . Andrews' ground-breaking Way Makers [has] more than 70 entries spanning the centuries." - Sally McDonald, The Sunday Post"An anthology that celebrates the literary heritage created by generations of women walker-writers." - Scottish Wildlife Magazine"Bringing together 75 works across numerous genres from the eighteenth century through the present day, Way Makers stands as a testament to women’s longstanding creative engagement with the deceptively simple practice of walking. Although the first of its kind in some ways, Way Makers joins a small but rich body of popular literary histories of walking that attend to women’s experience . . . a welcoming, meditative exploration of the complex and often contradictory meanings that can emerge when women take to the road or the trail . . . an eminently readable volume . . . Ultimately, Way Makers is sure to provide scholarly and casual readers alike with a fresh perspective on what it means to move through the world on foot. Andrews has given us an invigorating look at what the literature of women’s walking has to offer, and I hope this volume will inspire others to follow in her footsteps." - Trish Bredar, Women’s Writing"From the 18th century to the present day, and taking in poetry, letters, diaries, novels and more, this anthology traces the long tradition of women writing about walking. Among the many writers included are Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, Raynor Winn, Cheryl Strayed, Sarah Moss and Polly Atkin." - Caroline Sanderson, The Bookseller"Way Makers is a scintillating and exciting collection of women's voices." - Katharine Norbury, author of The Fish Ladder