Jane Freshfield (née Jane Quentin Crawford, publishing as "A Lady" and as Mrs Henry Freshfield; 5 July 1814 – 16 March 1901) was an English climber and travel writer. She was among the first British women to explore the Swiss Alps and encouraged others to do so.
Life
Jane Quentin Crawford was born 5 July 1814. She was the daughter of
William Crawford, MP for the City of London (1822-1841), who had made a fortune in the
British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
. Her brother was
Robert Wigram Crawford, also an MP.
In 1840, she married
Henry Ray Freshfield (1814-1895). Their son
Douglas Freshfield (1845-1934) was the editor of ''
Alpine Journal'' and president of the
Alpine Club.
The couple brought up their son with an appreciation of nature and the arts. From an early age they took him on journeys which included the
English Lake District and Scotland. From the mid-1850s the family took yearly summer holidays in
Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
, particularly the
Alps
The Alps () are some of the highest and most extensive mountain ranges in Europe, stretching approximately across eight Alpine countries (from west to east): Monaco, France, Switzerland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Germany, Austria and Slovenia.
...
. In old age, her son described the holidays they had taken together:
Valeria Azzolini wrote about her in ''I resoconti di viaggio di Freshfield'' ("Freshfield's Travel Journals"):
Lover of the mountain in the youngest and truest sense, hurry was unknown to her because it wasn't really reaching the top which insterested her, but the captivation of the landscapes she encountered on the path, and thus the hours she spent in that enjoyment.
Apart from the members of the family, there was another protagonist in Mrs Freshfield's narrations: the guide, Michel Alphonse Couttet. And it was surely in those years that the young Freshfield understood the importance, in every mountain action, of the presence of a good guide.
Publications
*''Alpine byways, or, Light leaves gathered in 1859 and 1860 / by a Lady'' (1861 London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts)
:*Italian translation published 2010 as ''Itinerari alpini meno conosciuti, ovvero, Foglie delicate raccolte nel 1859 e nel 1860 da una signora'' (Aosta : Art Point (libr. antiquaria))
*''A summer tour in the Grisons and Italian valleys of the Bernina / by Mrs. Henry Freshfield, author of 'Alpine byways'' (1862, London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts)
:The Grisons are the Swiss Alps now known as
Graubünden.
References
Further reading
*Piero Malvezzi (ed), Jane Freshfield, in ''Viaggiatori inglesi in Valle d'Aosta (1800-1860)'', Milano, Edizioni di Comunità, 1972, pp. 478–481.
External links
Blog post about ''Alpine Byways''including images of front page and dedication
A summer tour...in
University of Leeds
The University of Leeds is a public research university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It was established in 1874 as the Yorkshire College of Science. In 1884, it merged with the Leeds School of Medicine (established 1831) and was renamed Y ...
library catalogue
Alpine byways...in
COPAC Itinerari alpini...in
WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the O ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Freshfield, Jane
1814 births
1901 deaths
English women travel writers
English travel writers
British female climbers
19th-century English women writers
19th-century English writers