Anne Elwood (née Curteis, 1796 – 24 February 1873) was a British traveller, writer and biographer. It was claimed that she was the first woman to travel overland from Britain to India.

Life

Anne was born in 1796 to Edward Jeremiah Curteis, a writer and an independent Member of Parliament for Sussex, and his wife Mary Curteis. They lived near

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. She married on 9 January 1824 to Major Charles William Elwood. He was about 15 years older than her and he had worked for many years for the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

. The couple set off for India in 1825 and it was claimed that she was the first female to travel overland to India.Anne Elwood
Wolverhampton University, Retrieved 17 November 2016 She described her journey using the device of letters home which she published as ''Narrative of a Journey Overland from England to India'' in 1830. The book described her journey to India via Egypt and it was illustrated by her and her husband. She advised on the need for three days of underwear,

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s and several evening dresses. Elwood's book also included not only descriptions of her time in India when her husband was leading a regiment, but also the couple's return to England in 1828 by sea.Deborah Manley, ‘Elwood , Anne Katharine (1796–1873)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 200
accessed 17 Nov 2016
/ref> Her second book was also remarkable. Elwood says that she could not find a book about women writers and so she decided to write one. ''Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England from the Commencement of the Last Century'' was published in 1841 and it described the life of 29 leading women. Elwood knew several of the women and she was given access to their documents. The book was well regarded and was used as a source for the ''

Dictionary of National Biography The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...

''. Her writing was not always objective. She included

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in her leading women who had later travelled to India. Elwood thought her journey of two months was too fast. Elwood died in Clayton Priory in 1873.

Works

*''Narrative of a Journey Overland from England'' (1830)
volume I

volume II
*
Memoirs of the Literary Ladies of England
' (1845)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Elwood, Anne 1796 births 1873 deaths British travel writers British biographers British India 19th-century British women writers 19th-century British writers Women biographers British women travel writers