"Savory proved herself an able tiger hunter...wrote a description of her travels and adventures in A Sportswoman in India (1900)." - With Rifle & Petticoat: Women as Big Game Hunters, 1880-1940 (2002)
"Mrs. Savory's book, 'A Sportswoman in India,' ...would not be complete without tiger-shooting...her second tiger was a man-eater...so close she found his blood splashed over her gun-barrels." -The Morning Post (London), Aug. 23, 1900
"Isabel Savory's volume of personal adventure...'A Sportswoman in India'...is full of...fascinating interest...her exploits include pig-sticking, tiger-shooting, bear-hunting, and dodging snakes." -Chicago Tribune, Nov. 23, 1900
"Isabel Savory (1869-?)...proved to be an adept tiger-hunter...in 1900 published A Sportswoman in India, which blends travelogue with hunting narrative." - Heart Shots (2018)
What compelled the proper English lady, Isabel Savory, to go on a tiger-hunting expedition in India, and would she be up for this dangerous sport which proved fatal to many male hunters?
In 1900, Isabel Savory (born 1869) would publish an account of her harrowing hunting expedition in her book titled "A Sportswoman in India."
In introducing her first introduction to man-eating tigers, Savory writes:
"We had just finished breakfast one morning, when some excited natives came running up to tell us that a man near their village had been mauled by a tiger. We asked for the man. 'Oh!' they answered, 'he is dead—quite dead. How can he come before your honour!' The same thing appeared to have happened before, and possibly an old man-eater was in the neighbourhood. Where a tiger cannot get game or cattle, or when he has become too old to stalk them easily, for some reason or other, he may take to killing natives."
Besides accounts of a number of hunting expeditions, there are chapters upon the people and the architecture of India, and upon the British residents, their occupations and pleasures, their qualities, good and otherwise.
