An Adventurous Woman Abroad: The Selected Lantern Slides of Mary T.S. Schaffer

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, travelling within North American borders or beyond to exotic locations was difficult at best and disastrous at worst. Mary Schaffer, born into a Pennsylvania-based Quaker family in 1861, not only conquered international travel but also excelled as an explorer, surveyor and photographer in the backcountry of Canada’s Rocky Mountains and the isolated communities of Japan and Formosa (now Taiwan).

Michale Lang’s new book features more than 200 of Mary...