Episode Three: Flora Tristan, and Join Us for the Travel Writing Retreat, 3–6 May 2027

Stephen Powell and I have just finished recording Episode Three of Women Travel Writers, sitting outside under the bougainvillea at Monte Agudo, the same hillside near Tavira where we host our writing retreat. This time the subject is Flora Tristan (1803–1844), and she may be the most unlikely travel writer in the whole series, because she never set out to become one at all.

Flora Tristan was born in Paris in 1803, to a French mother and a Peruvian-born father whose marriage was never recognised under French law. When her father died suddenly in 1807, she was left, in the eyes of the state at least, illegitimate and without any claim on his estate. Married at seventeen to an engraver, she left the marriage in 1825 while pregnant with their third child (the daughter who later became Paul Gauguin’s mother), and spent years fighting an ugly custody battle. In 1833 she sailed for Peru to claim her father’s inheritance from her uncle in Arequipa. The claim failed, but the journey produced a book.

Flora’s Pérégrinations d’une paria (Peregrinations of a Pariah, 1838) named real members of Peru’s elite, including her uncle, who objected to the portrayal and had copies burned in Arequipa.

In one memorable passage, Tristan describes the tapada limeña, Lima women dressed in the saya y manto. The saya was a long, close-fitting silk skirt, pleated so tightly it moved with the body, worn in blue, brown, green or black. Over it went the manto, a silk wrap drawn up to cover the head and face entirely, leaving only a single eye uncovered. Between the two, a tapada could walk through Lima utterly unidentifiable, even to her own husband, and the anonymity gave these women a freedom of movement through the city that was unusual for the period. Flora writes: “There is no place on earth where women are freer, or hold more power, than in Lima.”

It made her notorious rather than respected. On 10 September 1838, her estranged husband shot her in a Paris street. She survived, he was sentenced to twenty years’ hard labour, and she won the legal right to use her maiden name again. Five years later she published L’Union ouvrière (The Workers’ Union, 1843), arguing that women’s emancipation and workers’ emancipation were the same struggle, a claim that predates Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto by five years. She died while on tour promoting that book, in Bordeaux, in 1844, aged forty-one. Workers funded a monument over her grave, and a small ceremony is still held there every 14 November.

Like Mary Wollstonecraft before her, Flora Tristan wasn’t a travel writer by choice. The book came directly out of a personal fight for inheritance and legitimacy, and turned into one of the earliest travel books to fuse personal grievance with political argument.

Flora Tristan on YouTube

Join us: Travel Writing Retreat, Algarve, 3–6 May 2027

Stephen and I will be hosting a four-day Travel Writing Retreat in the Algarve, from 3 to 6 May 2027, at our homes on Monte Agudo, near Tavira, the same settings you’ve been seeing behind us in our travel writing episodes.

As with our retreat last year, the four days combine practical guidance on gathering material, structuring a narrative and refining your prose, a focus on observation and seeing a place with a writer’s eye, a roaming day to explore the local countryside and capture impressions in writing, and individual and group feedback sessions, all in a rural setting a few kilometres from the sea, surrounded by hills and orange groves.

Feedback from 2026

“The location in Stephen and Sue’s gardens was relaxing and conducive to creative writing. I also very much enjoyed the opportunity to walk around Tavira to learn about the historic sites. It made me want to return to spend more time there.” Rosalie

“Takeaways: Recommended reading, understanding better travel writing as a genre, writing a piece on the outing assignment, Sue and Stephen’s complementary skills, Stephen’s encouraging feedback, Sue’s extensive group process experience, literary support among accomplished writers, and the journey itself.” Francoise

“I think you made everyone feel so welcome and safe.” Debbie

The food was fantastic!! And very thoughtfully prepared, thank you for all the vegetables. 😃

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