Fanny Bullock Workman

Fanny Bullock Workman (January 8, 1859 – January 22, 1925) was an American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer, notably in the Himalayas. She was one of the first female professional mountaineers; she not only explored but also wrote about her adventures. She set several women's altitude records, published eight travel books with her husband, and championed women's rights and women's suffrage.

Born to a wealthy family, Workman was educated in the finest schools available to women and traveled in Europe. Her marriage to cemented these advantages, and, after being introduced to climbing in New Hampshire, Fanny Workman traveled the world with him. They were able to capitalize on their wealth and connections to voyage around Europe, North Africa, and Asia. The couple had two children, but Fanny Workman was not a motherly type; they left their children in schools and with nurses, and Workman saw herself as a New Woman who could equal any man. The Workmans began their travels with bicycle tours of Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Algeria and India. They cycled thousands of miles, sleeping wherever they could find shelter. They wrote books about each trip and Fanny frequently commented on the state of the lives of women that she saw. Their early bicycle tour narratives were better received than their mountaineering books.

At the end of their cycling trip through India, the couple escaped to the Western Himalaya and the Karakoram for the summer months, where they were introduced to high-altitude climbing. They returned to this then-unexplored region eight times over the next 14 years. Despite not having modern climbing equipment, the Workmans explored several glaciers and reached the summit of several mountains, eventually reaching on Pinnacle Peak, a women's altitude record at the time. They organized multiyear expeditions but struggled to remain on good terms with the local labor force. Coming from a position of American privilege and wealth, they failed to understand the position of the native workers and had difficulty finding and negotiating for reliable porters.

After their trips to the Himalaya, the Workmans gave lectures about their travels. They were invited to learned societies; Fanny Workman became the first American woman to lecture at the Sorbonne and the second to speak at the Royal Geographical Society. She received many medals of honor from European climbing and geographical societies and was recognized as one of the foremost climbers of her day. She demonstrated that a woman could climb in high altitudes just as well as a man and helped break down the gender barrier in mountaineering.

Early life

Workman was born January 8, 1859, in Worcester, Massachusetts, to a wealthy and elite family descended from the Pilgrims; she was the youngest of three children. Her mother was Elvira Hazard, and her father was Alexander H. Bullock, businessman and Republican Massachusetts governor. Fanny was educated by governesses before attending Miss Graham's Finishing School in New York City, after which she spent time in Paris, and then Dresden. Thomas Pauly writes in his short biography of Workman that "early on Fanny chafed at the constraints of her privilege". A small number of her stories from this time survive, describing her interest in adventure. In one, "A Vacation Episode", she describes a beautiful and aristocratic English girl who is contemptuous of society. She runs away to Grindelwald, becoming an excellent alpinist and marrying an American. The story encapsulates much of Fanny's own life: wanderlust, a love of the mountains, and a commitment to women's rights. In 1886, she published a short story, set during the First Indian War, in ''New York Magazine'' about "the capture and rescue of a white girl"; a reviewer of the story stated that it was "told in a very pleasant and infatuating style".

In 1879, Fanny returned to the United States and on June 16, 1882 married William Hunter Workman, a man 12 years her senior. He was also from a wealthy and educated family, having attended Yale and having received his medical training at Harvard. In 1884 they had a daughter, Rachel.

William introduced Fanny to climbing after their marriage, and together they spent many summers in the White Mountains in New Hampshire; here she summited Mount Washington () several times. Climbing in the Northeastern United States allowed Fanny to develop her abilities together with other women. Unlike European clubs, American climbing clubs in the White Mountains allowed women members and encouraged women to climb. They promoted a new vision of the American woman, one who was both domestic and athletic, and Workman took to this image with enthusiasm. By 1886, women sometimes outnumbered men on hiking expeditions in New England. In her paper on the gender dynamics of climbing in the region, Jenny Ernie-Steighner states that this formative experience shaped Workman's commitment to women's rights, pointing out that "no other well-known international mountaineers of the time, male or female, spoke as openly and fervently about women's rights". However, both of the Workmans disliked the provincial nature of life in Worcester, where they resided, and yearned to live in Europe. After both Fanny's and William's fathers died, leaving them enormous estates, the couple embarked on their first major European trip, a tour of Scandinavia and Germany.

Move to Europe and cycling tours

In 1889 the Workman family relocated to Germany citing William's health, although Pauly speculates that this may have been merely a pretext, for he recovered surprisingly quickly. The couple's second child, Siegfried, was born shortly after they arrived in Dresden. Fanny chose not to conform to the traditionally circumscribed roles of wife and mother, and became an author and adventurer. She lived a vigorous life that diverged from idealized femininity in the 1800s. As a feminist, Fanny considered herself an example of the idea that women could equal and excel over men in the arduous life, and embodied the New Woman ethos of the day. Moreover, as Miller points out in her book about women explorers, since the ideal family of the time was a large one and information about birth control was not easily available, William's medical knowledge must have been invaluable. The Workmans left their children with nurses while they took long trips. In 1893, Siegfried died from a combination of influenza