A unique and substantial scrapbook mapping the remarkable early professional contributions and life of “the woman traveller,” British sports and travel journalist, society figure and early agitator for ‘women in professions’, Ethel Brilliana Tweedie, who published as Mrs. Alec Tweedie, via critical responses (clipped newspaper, journal and magazine reviews) to her many and various books, pamphlets and articles, as well as her role as a society and philanthropic figure; likely compiled by Tweedie and annotated throughout in her hand, it opens with accounts of her marriage, includes reviews of her books (A Girl’s Ride in Iceland (1889), The Oberammergau Passion Play (1890), A Winter Jaunt to Norway (1894), Wilton, Q.C.; Or, Life in a Highland Shooting-Box (1895), Through Finland in Carts (1898), and her biography of her father, George Harley (1899)), pamphlets and articles (such as Danish versus English Butter-Making (1895), ‘A Visit to the “Institute Pasteur”‘ (1889) and ‘Golf vs. Bicycling’) and popular Temple Bar interviews, ‘At home’ with Norwegian playwrights Ibsen and Björnson, plus Dr Nansen, as well as accounts of “My Maiden Speech” at the 1896 public meeting introducing the National Council of Women of Great Britain & Ireland, her work for women in agriculture, and her role as Chair of the 3rd International Congress of Women (1909). It includes the media furore around women riding astride (see image to the left), a practice Tweedie had adopted, following Icelandic women, whilst travelling in their country. It also features more personal items, such as theatrical bills for private performances as a young woman at 25 Harley Street and a menu (the Women’s Writers Dinner), plus obituaries of her father, the Scottish physician, George Harley (1829–1896), and reports about the jubilee celebrations of her old school, Queen’s College, London, which Tweedie marked with her booklet, The First College Open To Women (1898).
Ethel Brilliana Tweedie FRGS (formerly Harley, 1862–1940) was a prolific British travel writer and popular journalist, who wrote as Mrs. Alex Tweedie, ‘E.B.T,’ ‘Brilliana’ and, earlier, as Ethel B. Harley. This scrapbook covers the early years of Tweedie’s extraordinary career (1889-1909 predominantly, but including personal items dating from 1879), when she was also a society figure; it leads up to, and includes the years immediately after, the tragedy of her husband Alexander Tweedie’s unexpected death in 1896, which was followed by her father’s death three months later. Tweedie received neither settlement nor bequest from either man and turned to writing to support herself and her two sons. Whilst the scrapbook features obituaries of her father, it is silent on her husband (whose death followed “the shock of financial disaster following the catastrophic failure of his marine insurance syndicate”) – perhaps the reason for the blank pages, in an otherwise stuffed scrapbook?
The preeminent account of the early professional and philanthropic life of the extraordinary British traveller and popular writer at the turn of the 19th/20th century, who used her platform and pen to advocate for women’s rights, especially in education and work.