Way Makers

A sweeping collection of women’s writing on the wandering path, moving across genres, geographies, and centuries.

The follow-up to the celebrated Wanderers, Kerri Andrews’s Way Makers is the first anthology of women’s writing about walking. Moving from Elizabeth Carter’s correspondence with Catherine Talbot in the eighteenth century through to Merryn Glover in the present day, and across poetry, letters, diaries, novels, and more, this anthology traces a long tradition of women’s walking literature. Walking is, for the women included in this anthology, a source of creativity and comfort; it is a means of expressing grief, longing, and desire. It is also a complicated activity: it represents freedom but is also sometimes tinged with danger and fear. What cannot be denied any longer is that walking was, and continues to be, an activity full of physical and emotional significance for women: this anthology is a testament to the rich literary heritage created by generations of women walker-writers over the centuries.