ANNA BRASSEY

Anna Brassey (1839-1887)

Annie, Lady Brassey was a very popular Victorian author. She travelled with her husband, Thomas and their four children aboard their yacht, the Sunbeam. Their eleven month sailing trip around the world in 1876-7 was inmortalized in Anna’s book “A Voyage in the Sunbeam”. The book ran through many English editions and was translated into many other languages. During her travels, lady Brassey collected many objects of the different cultures they visited. Her large collection of ethnographic and natural history objects were originally shown in a museum at her London house but they were moved eventually to Hastings Museum in 1919. Annie Brassey spent the last ten years of her life mainly at sea. She died suddenly of malaria on the way home from India and Australia in 1887 and was buried at sea at the age of 48.

A voyage in the Sunbeam