A captivating exploration, 19 Jul 2003
From the firm foundation of her earlier works on the archaeology of Easter Island and the history of the 1913-1915 Routledge expedition, Van Tilburg has launched successfully into biography. Van Tilburg has not focused myopically on her subject but places her within the broad, complex history of the island and its people. Katherine Routledge and the island are poretrayed with intimacy, insight and solid scholarship.
Arriving at Easter Island at a time when, as Van Tilburg points out, there were four times as many moai statues as islanders, Routledge was ideally placed to record the island at a critical moment. She talked to those who had lived through the slave raids, epidemics and missionization and who could recall the distant past. She carefully documented the material traces of the maoi and birdman religions. She also arranged to carry away a large quantity of those materials, many now in museum collections in Britain.
Written in a warm and engaging style and illustrated with photographs of Katherine's life and drawings from the expedition, this is a compelling story of a fascinating island and a strong, unusual woman.
The best read of the year, 16 May 2003
Right from the prologue to the end of this extraordinary book, I couldn't move from my chair. A most fantastic read, a wonderfully, gripping and superbly researched story, marvellously told by Dr Jo Anne van Tilburg.
It tells of a strong-willed north country English girl, Katherine Maria Pease born into a Quaker family in the second half of the 19th century, a 1st cousin twice removed from Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer, and defying the conventions of Victorian society, went up to Oxford where she obtained her degree(not awarded until much later), but being one of the earliest of her sex to do so.
Katherine(Pease) Routledge, the boss of her siblings, overturned the unwritten rules of 19th century society, supported the suffragettes, went to South Africa at the end of the 2nd Boer War,then met and afterwards married an anthropologist William Scoresby Rotledge. They designed and built a boat, and from England sailed the Atlantic and the Pacific to Easter Island, and for two years made a study of the island, its people and the extraordinary massive stone statues there. Katherine dabbled in the occult and claimed communication with her dead grandfather. Katherine's last years of her sometimes sad, turbulent, fighting life were spent at Ticehurst, an asylum in Sussex.
I was shamelessly diverted from doing anything else to savour this enthralling, often amusing, sometimes sad, but always entertaining story.Truly, a magnificent read.
The best read of the year, 16 May 2003
Right from the prologue to the end of this extraordinary book, I couldn't move from my chair. A most fantastic read, a wonderfully, gripping and superbly researched story, marvellously told by Dr Jo Anne van Tilburg.
It tells of a strong-willed north country English girl, Katherine Maria Pease born into a Quaker family in the second half of the 19th century, a 1st cousin twice removed from Elizabeth Fry, the prison reformer, and defying the conventions of Victorian society, went up to Oxford where she obtained her degree(not awarded until much later), but being one of the earliest of her sex to do so.
Katherine(Pease) Routledge, the boss of her siblings, overturned the unwritten rules of 19th century society, supported the suffragettes, went to South Africa at the end of the 2nd Boer War,then met and afterwards married an anthropologist William Scoresby Rotledge. They designed and built a boat, and from England sailed the Atlantic and the Pacific to Easter Island, and for two years made a study of the island, its people and the extraordinary massive stone statues there. Katherine dabbled in the occult and claimed communication with her dead grandfather. Katherine's last years of her sometimes sad, turbulent, fighting life were spent at Ticehurst, an asylum in Sussex.
I was shamelessly diverted from doing anything else to savour this enthralling, often amusing, sometimes sad, but always entertaining story.Truly, a magnificent read.
