Pfeiffer

Pfeiffer, IDA (née REYER), a celebrated female globe-trotter, was born at Vienna, October 15, 1797. In 1820 she married an advocate named Pfeiffer, from whom she was obliged to obtain a separation. When she had settled her two sons in life, she proceeded to gratify, at the age of forty-five, her long-cherished inclination for a life of travel and adventure. Her first expedition was to the Holy Land in 1842. She published an account of her eastern rambles in the following year, which, like all her other works, went through many editions, and was translated into French and English. In 1845 she visited northern Europe—Sweden, Norway, Lapland, and Iceland—and recorded her impressions in another book, Skandinavien und Island (2 vols. 1846). Resolving in 1846 on a voyage round the world, she started from Hamburg in a Danish brig for Brazil. She then sailed round Cape Horn to Chili, thence across the Pacific to Otaheite, China, and Calcutta, traversed India, Persia, western Asia, southern Russia, and Greece, and re-entered Vienna in 1848. Two years later she published a narrative of her travels and adventures, entitled Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt (3 vols. 1850). Meine Zweite Weltreise (1856) describes a second journey round the world from England by the Cape to Java, Borneo, California, Peru, and the United States (1851–54). In 1856 she set out on what was to be her last expedition—namely, to Madagascar. After enduring terrible hardships, she got away, and came home to Vienna—to die, October 28, 1858.