This article is a great introduction to female adventurers, including the Victorians Isabella Bird, Mary Kingsley and Freya Stark. It emphasises why these women were doing things that were not expected of their gender at that time. 

This is the story of how Jeanne Baret, a working-class woman, disguised herself as a man and became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe. It describes the period she lived in and why she would have needed to pretend to be a man to become an explorer. It also shows her scientific contributions to the voyage, which would link in with the UK science curriculum. 

As well as an explorer, Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, spy, Arabist, linguist, author, poet, photographer, mountaineer and nation builder. With this book, which draws on Bell’s own writings, students can explore the roles Bell decided for herself and how she was able to determine her own future despite the restrictions placed on her by society. 

This article is excellent at showing the traditional male and female gender spheres and how female explorers challenged the status quo. It is a great resource for students to investigate the significance of female explorers in the nineteenth century and within the British empire.