Glynis Ridley is the author of Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, which won the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) Prize. A British citizen, she is now a professor of English at the University of Louisville.
When you consider that the entire historical record for Jeanne Baret comprises little more than a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, a death certificate, and a handful of mentions in other
