Today’s Kickass Women doubles as a SQUEE grade book review. Balloonomania Belles by Sharon Wright ( A | BN | K | AB ) is a comprehensive, fun, and sometimes harrowing look at female aeronauts (who flew balloons) and parachutists (who jumped out of them) from the first days of ballooning through the Edwardian Era.
This book is easy to read, well organized, and comprehensive. However, it’s not very technical so for the mechanics of ballooning and parachuting, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Additionally, most women did this either as recreation or as entertainers. The history of balloons in science and in warfare isn’t covered. For that, I recommend Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air by Richard Holmes. ( A | BN | K | AB )
In Balloonomania Belles, you get a book packed with kickass women. We have Sophie Blanchard, who was afraid of everything until she went up in a balloon and found she
loved it, and who was only able to reach fame and financial success after her husband died. We have Mrs. Graham, who had seven children, flew while pregnant, and defended herself against reporters who accused her of being a menace (she crashed often). There’s Lily Cove, who thrilled audiences with her parachuting skills, and tragic fourteen year old Louisa Maud Evans, who lied about her age to get a chance to try parachuting and died on her first jump. On a happier note, Dolly Shepherd had a long parachuting career including successfully pulling off the world’s first mid-air rescue, and lived to be 96.
The women range from struggling working class to very wealthy, married and single and with and without children, from young (R.I.P. Louisia) to not so young (Mrs. Graham was still flying in her 50s, often with an assortment of her children in the basket with her).
There are pictures! Behold the clothes! Behold the balloons! Behold the adventure! Truly, the mix of adventure, terrible crashes, and aerial beauty made me a) want very much never to get into a hot air balloon and b)want nothing more than to get into one right away. The book makes it clear that ballooning and parachuting from balloons gave women a new way to express themselves and their need for economic options and personal freedom:
Whatever their real role at the birth of ballooning, women were at the heart of everything that followed. Down on the ground they were trapped in subordinate roles imposed by the law and rules of society. Up in the sky they were free.
If you are interested in female balloonists and the craze of ballooning that lasted from the Regency days through the Edwardian Era, here are a couple of other things from Smart Bitches to check out:
Kickass Women in History: Sophie Blanchard
Review of Spy Fall by Diana Quincy
I hope poor Louisia was reincarnated as an aviatrix.
Having spent some time as a chaser with a friend’s balloon crew in college, this book really speaks to me. I’d be interested to see how the mechanics and culture developed over time. And it’s lovely to find something that women were able to equally participate in from its beginning.