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Foreword to the 100th Anniversary Edition

Writer, philanthropist, suffragette, Congresswoman, industrialist and religious sister – Hannah Abernathy lived six lives in the space of one. It is her first vocation that this book, a special 100th anniversary reprinting of The Inter-Imperial or a Lady’s Journey Across Europe, is concerned with. When Abernathy wrote The Inter-Imperial, she was only 24 years old yet had already made history by being one of the first female graduates of Buffalo National College.

Abernathy’s family fortune, grown over three generations, allowed Abernathy a good measure of freedom. Like many wealthy young women (and men) of her generation, she undertook the Great Railway Tour (that successor to the earlier Grand Tour which swapped Russia for Rome as the ultimate destination). During her rail journey from Paris to Petrograd (or St. Petersburg at the time), Abernathy encountered a fairly diverse set of Europeans (almost all, it must be noted, of the comfortable middle and upper classes). The journey was an eye-opening one for Abernathy and set the stage for her remarkable career (or careers) over the next half-century.

The world Abernathy was born into, the world depicted in The Inter-Imperial, was already standing on a precipice as she traveled across its European heartland. Within a decade, two of the countries she visited would undergo radical transformation of the most traumatic kind, and one would have completely ceased to exist. Hints of the coming upheaval can be seen in Abernathy’s account, as well as of the broader conflicts of the 20th century.

Climb aboard the Inter-Imperial, then, and journey along with America’s Grand Old Lady...

Author’s Introduction

The following narrative is drawn from my very copious notes and diary entries taken as I journeyed across Europe on the Inter-Imperial Railway in the spring of this year. In some cases, aliases have been granted to characters to protect them from nuisance and worse in light of my frankness. Not a single word is untrue and the only omissions are due to my failures of memory instead of any intent towards censorship. I hope the general reader finds some entertainment and edification in what follows.

Hannah Abernathy
East Hamburg, New York
October 8, 1917
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