Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking

by Kerri Andrews (Editor), Elizabeth Carter (Contributor), Catherine Talbot (Contributor)

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 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 this anthology is a testament to the rich literary heritage created by generations of women walker-writers over the centuries.

Genres: Nonfiction, Womens, Travel, Nature

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2023

About the author

Dr. Kerri Andrews is the author of Wanderers: A History of Women Walking and the compiler of Nan Shepherd’s Correspondence: 1920-1980. She was also the consultant for the play Nan Shepherd: Naked and Unashamed by Richard Baron and Ellee Zeegen, staged by Pitlochry Festival Theatre in 2024 and 2025.

Reviews

[Rozanna Lilley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this anthology of women's writing about walking. The excerpts are arranged chronologically. Of course, a reader could dip in and out in any order but I chose to go from start to finish. The first piece was written in 1746; the last 2021. Some of the texts I had read before - Virginia Woolf's 'Mrs Dalloway', Cheryl Strayd's 'Wild', Katherine May's 'The Electricity of Every Living Thing'. It was satisfying to go back to these and see them positioned differently, their particularities highlighted by being in conversation with others. Most of the writing was, however, new to me. A number of selections from Dorothy Wordsworth struck a gentle chord, prompting me to find out a little more about her life and the part that writing played in it. I loved Helen Mort's poem 'Kinder Scout' (2016) - "I don't know if I'm ready/to be taken//but I'd like to lie prepared:/ unnoticed, important as butter,//softening/on the hill's plate." The variety of work included and the pleasures it offered are too numerous to continue enumerating. But I am confident that every reader would find a worthwhile path within. For me, Simone de Beauvoir's 1960 discussion of walking, and making plans about walking, as a form of optimism (as opposed to Sartre's accusations of schizophrenia), comes closest to my own obsessive projects. All of this brings me to why such a collection is important. Today, a woman walking continues to take a risk, insisting on her right to move through and be part of public space, to be interested in the world, to observe it. I have been attacked three times while walking - once as a teenager in Sydney when a man exposed himself to me, uttering obscenities; a second time in Hong Kong where a man came up behind me, in broad daylight on a busy road, twisting my breast and the third on the South Coast of NSW where I felt a strange prickling sensation as I trudged through scrubby sandhills, turning just in time to see a man wearing only sneakers coming up behind me. I was lucky he ran off. I imagine almost any woman who has walked habitually across a lifetime could tell similar stories, and many worse. I am still walking and I am grateful for the company these women offered me on my journey.

[Stewart Monckton · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me, this book turned from a 3 star to a 4.5 star book in the 1960s!

The 70 odd writings here are arranged in chronological order, starting in 1747 and ending in 2021. I found the early works far less engaging that the later ones, with the style of the early pieces confirming to me that I am more or less a post WW1 reader. This was so clearly identified for me with a piece from Muriel Gray (1991), which occurred more than half way through the book and was (in my opinion) the first writing that contained overt humour.

All this being said, it was an interesting exercise to read the earlier works - which are way out of my normal reading arc - but I found them interesting in a formal way, rather than interesting in an engaging way.

Of course, others may have completely the opposite view.

I would recommend the book, not least because of the range of styles and voice it contains. SM

[Lorna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked the combination of women who write and walk: two of my favorite activities. As I have experienced in other literature, reading works from the 1700's is a challenge for me. It does make me mindfully walk, not dart, through their words though. It took me over a month to finish this book, with novels read in between. I wasn't surprised that I hadn't heard of about half of the writers, but when I saw Dorothy Wordsworth, I looked her up. I found her life an interesting read, and wondered if she would have stood on her on in a future century, instead of the supporting role of her brother. I am not familiar with the landscape of Scotland. I am quite visual, so I think little maps for these walks in there lands would have helped me traverse with them.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful collection of poems, recollections, and snippets of literature, but I think my favourite bits are the letters, especially the early letters. The subject of this anthology is one that is close to my heart, and the thread of shared thoughts and emotions and experiences which emerges from it makes me feel connected to these women who lived and died, some of them, over two centuries ago. As far as I know, this is still the only book of its kind, but I hope there will be more.

[Tim Chamberlain · Rating 4 out of 5]

The publication of Way Makers: An Anthology of Women’s Writing about Walking, edited by Kerri Andrews (Reaktion, 2023), is long overdue. As Andrews writes in the Introduction: “This is the first anthology of women’s writing about walking. It seems remarkable to be writing that in mid-2022, when anthologies of walking pepper bookshelves in hundreds of bookshops, but it is nonetheless true.” Such omissions are not due to a lack of material, as this anthology amply attests, given that it contains 74 pieces of writing by 57 different authors. “Much of it has lain in plain sight,” Andrews observes, citing the centrality of walking to the denouement of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a prime example. In this anthology, which Andrews has arranged chronologically, there is a mix of both prose and poem ranging through the years from 1746 to the present day. Many of the authors it features are well-known names, such as Dorothy Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Virginia Woolf, Anais Nin, and, of course, Nan Shepherd. But other names are less well-known or even unexpected (Dorothy L. Sayers?), and this is the quirk of a good anthology in my opinion. It can spark joy through welcome familiarity as much as through its equally welcome opposite, by introducing one to new and hitherto unheard-of writers and their works. Inspiring us, perhaps, to return to old literary friends as much as prompting us to seek out the acquaintance of authors who are new to us and the promise of the world seen anew through their books.

I've written a longer and more in-depth review of this book and Kerri Andrews Wanderers on my personal blog, here.

[Elise M · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic inspiring and important book, and I was shocked to read in the introduction this is the very first book of it's kind. I've seen so many books about walking come up but this was the very first one just with female contributions. My only complaint would be it could have done with a few less pieces set in the UK and more from other countries, but each piece was lovely and interesting to read.