page_title: Fanny Bullock Workman
section_title: Move to Europe and cycling tours
hierarchical_section_title: Fanny Bullock Workman / Move to Europe and cycling tours
caption_attribution_description: English: William Hunter Workman and Fanny Bullock Workman, husband and wife mountaineering and writing team.
context_page_description: Fanny Bullock Workman was an American geographer, cartographer, explorer, travel writer, and mountaineer, notably in the Himalayas. She was one of the first female professional mountaineers; she not only explored but also wrote about her adventures. She set several women's altitude records, published eight travel books with her husband, and championed women's rights and women's suffrage.
context_section_description: In 1889 the Workman family relocated to Germany citing William's health, although Pauly speculates that this may have been merely a pretext, for he recovered surprisingly quickly. The couple's second child, Siegfried, was born shortly after they arrived in Dresden. Fanny chose not to conform to the traditionally circumscribed roles of wife and mother, and became an author and adventurer.  She lived a vigorous life that diverged from idealized femininity in the 1800s.  As a feminist, Fanny considered herself an example of the idea that women could equal and excel over men in the arduous life, and embodied the New Woman ethos of the day. Moreover, as Miller points out in her book about women explorers, since the ideal family of the time was a large one and information about birth control was not easily available, William's medical knowledge must have been invaluable. The Workmans left their children with nurses while they took long trips. In 1893, Siegfried died from a combination of influenza and pneumonia.  After his death, according to Pauly, Workman, through her bicycle tours, "aggressively pursued an alternative identity, one that liberated her from the conventional responsibilities of wife and mother and allowed for her interests and ambitions".  They missed their daughter's wedding to Sir Alexander MacRobert in 1911 while exploring in the Karakoram.
  Together, the Workmans explored the world and co-wrote eight travel books that describe the people, art, and architecture of the areas they journeyed through.  The Workmans were aware of their contribution to the genre of travel writing, as they commented on other writers in their own works. Their mountaineering narratives said little about the culture of those remote and sparsely inhabited regions; they included both lyrical descriptions of the sunset, for example, for their popular audience and detailed explanations of geographical features, such as glaciers, for their scientific readership.  Fanny and William added scientific elements to their writings to appeal to authoritative organizations such as the Royal Geographical Society; Fanny also believed the science would make her more legitimate in the eyes of the climbing community, but it cost her readers. In general, their bicycling tour narratives were better received than those about their mountaineering exploits. Fanny wrote the majority of these travel books herself, and in them she commented extensively on the plight of women wherever she traveled.
  Stephanie Tingley writes, in her encyclopedia entry on Workman's travel writing, that there is an implied feminist criticism of the hardships women experienced and the inferior status of the women in the societies she encountered. As a strong-willed, outspoken supporter of women's rights, Workman used their travels to demonstrate her own abilities and to highlight the inequities other women lived under.  However, their travel books are written in the first-person plural or third-person singular, so it is difficult to decisively attribute views or voices to either William or Fanny. The Workmans' works are colonialist in that they describe the people they meet and observe as "exotic or unusual, at worst as primitive or even subhuman". However, at times they make it clear that the people they encounter see them in a similar light, demonstrating that they were sometimes aware of their own biases.
  Between 1888 and 1893, the Workmans took bicycling tours of Switzerland, France, and Italy. In 1891, Fanny became one of the first women to climb Mont Blanc. She also was one of the first women to climb the Jungfrau and the Matterhorn; her guide was Peter Taugwalder, who had made the first ascent with Edward Whymper. In 1893, the couple decided to explore areas beyond Europe and headed for Algeria, Indochina, and India. These longer trips were Fanny's idea. The couple's first extended tour was a 2,800-mile (4,500 km) bicycle trip across Spain in 1895; each of them carried 20 pounds (9.1 kg) of luggage and they averaged 45 miles (72 km) a day, sometimes riding up to 80 miles (130 
caption: Portrait of Fanny and William
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