The Man Who Married A Mountain: A Journey Through the French Pyrenees

Henry Russell, 19th-century mountaineer and explorer, combined a thirst for travel with a typically French attachment to his own region. He climbed every mountain in the Pyrenees and reveled in nature’s extremes. In The Man Who Married a Mountain, Rosemary Bailey finds not only Russell but a whole cast of 19th-century visitors, striding up the glaciers in tweed jackets and hobnailed boots. English, Americans, Russians, and many others, from Tennyson to Flaubert, colonized the Pyrenees in search of the Sublime, the Picturesque, the Beautiful. Bailey weaves together Russell’s story with her own experience of the Pyrenees, living in a converted monastery and sharing her life with those who also seek refuge in this magical land.