Linda Quirk is a librarian in Bruce Peel Special Collections at University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the first generation of Canadian women to work as professional authors, including Sara Jeannette Duncan, E. Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake), Nellie McClung, and the Eaton sisters (Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna).

Sara Jeannette Duncan was a well-known journalist when, in 1888, she and fellow journalist Lily Lewis did something delightfully shocking. In a significant departure from the social norms of the day, these two young, unmarried women traveled around the world, with neither a male escort nor a chaperone, and filed a series of articles about their unorthodox adventures. Their high-profile articles were popular in the United States and Canada, so it was not surprising when a British women´s magazine called The Lady´s Pictorial invited Duncan to publish a fictional version in serial form. This text was the basis of her first novel, A Social Departure, the critical and commercial success of which led immediately to a change in Duncan´s professional status. Although she would continue to write critical essays and to work as a journalist occasionally, Duncan had suddenly become a best-selling novelist of international stature. It was the beginning of a long and productive career.

This new edition provides much context by clarifying literary, historical, and culturally-specific references, and it reprints a selection of the travel articles written by Duncan and Lewis. Exploring a range of innovative topics, it offers a selection of critical essays by Denise Heaps, Peggy Martin, Eli MacLaren, Caroline Lieffers and Aya Fujiwara, and Emily J. Bruusgaard.