Recollections of a Happy Life: Being the Autobiography of Marianne North Vol. I

Recollections of a happy life, being the autobiography of Marianne North #1

by Marianne North

Marianne North (1830-90), the Victorian amateur botanist and painter, travelled to distant countries of the world to paint exotic flora in their natural surroundings. This two-volume collection of her memoirs, edited by her sister and published in 1892, records North's remarkable travels. Laden with her palettes and easels, the independent North travelled alone and fended for herself. Her journals describe how she endured swarms of insects, scaled cliffs, trudged through wilderness and crossed swamps in order to reach the plants she wanted to paint. Volume 1 covers North's early upbringing and the origins of her enthusiasm for nature, and traces her travels through Canada and the United States, Jamaica, Brazil, Japan, Borneo, India and Sri Lanka.

374 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Marianne North was a prolific English Victorian biologist and botanical artist, notable for her plant and landscape paintings, her extensive foreign travels, her writings, her plant discoveries and the creation of her gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Reviews

[Liza · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the only book in a long time that I haven't been able to finish. It's prettily written and introduces many eccentric characters, and is a solid travel memoir, a historical curiousity and a story of a remarkable woman to boot. However, I couldn't get past about the halfway point because of, well, her blatant, shameless racism. It began as a sort of "benevolent" kind of racism - condescending, but not particularly vitriolic. Then the mockery of the black people in Jamaica began, and ultimately it leads to the author lamenting the fact that the abolition of slavery in England had taken good servants away, and justifying slavery with the "they're so well-treated" argument. Add a few N-words with hard Rs sprinkled here and there, and you'll get the full picture.
Allthough not completely surprising considering both the era and North's privileged background, her horrendous lack of compassion for the enslaved people and total lack of self-awareness did ruin the book for me.

[Greynomad · Rating 4 out of 5]

At first I was put off by the writing but once into her dialogue her sense of humor and life as she traveled was just amazing especially during that time frame.

Unfortunately there was no images of her paintings,

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Marianne diary part II covers India and Africa