The Adventurous Life of Lady Dorothy Mills, Explorer & Writer

Lady Dorothy ‘Dolly’ Mills was a petite figure with a big personality, born in 1889 into the political and literary Walpole family. When she married a clever but poor army captain, her father disinherited her. Defying her background and the expectations of her sex, she became a renowned explorer in West Africa – she was the first English woman in Timbuktu – and beyond, travelling deep into Venezuela and Asia where only men had gone before. This is the first book about her life.

Dolly wrote acclaimed travel books illuminating remote places and peoples and describing history in the making. By the 1930s she was the best-known female explorer of the day, appearing on platforms and in books with prominent men. A feminist with unorthodox views, she also wrote incisive features and escapist novels. Elected an early female Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, on her death in 1959 Dolly left a bequest for women explorers. Hers is a story of exploration and self-discovery that shifts between the decadence of Jazz Age London and the brutality of desert and bush.

Publication date: 20 March 2025. (Available to pre-order.) Publisher: The History Press.