AustLit

19th-Century Australian Travel Writing

Jessie A. Ackermann (1857?-1951) was an American-born traveller, journalist, social reformer, and women’s suffragist who published the illustrated work The World Through a Woman's Eyes. The text is a chronicle of her travels as a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union through Alaska, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Tasmania, Japan, China, Siam, Java, Burmah, India, and Africa, the majority of which was previously published in the Ladies' Home Companion in 1895. Written in an engaging, conversational manner, during her brief stay in Tasmania Ackermann described the climate, the ruins at Port Arthur, and the colony's dark convict past. Ackermann returned to Australia later and conducted considerable work especially related to suffrage: she subsequently published What Women Have Done with the Vote (1913) and Australia From a Woman's Point of View (1913).