Unbound by Sky or Society: Lilian Bland

Lilian Bland was not meant to fly. Born into the gilded cage of the Anglo-Irish gentry, she was expected to embrace marriage and drawing-rooms. Instead, Lilian Bland chose trousers over crinolines, a motorbike over a carriage, and professional ambition over propriety. She traded the stifling world of Victorian aristocracy for the bohemian freedom of London. This definitive biography chronicles the three astonishing acts of a woman who rejected every prescribed limit: First, her years as a self-sufficient journalist and photographer on Fleet Street, where she earned the capital to fund her eccentric passions. Second, the technical triumph that made her Ireland's first female aviator, detailing how she built, modified, and flew her infamous home-made biplane, the Mayfly. Finally, her final radical reinvention as a resolute homesteader, abandoning the limelight to manage a challenging ranch on the remote Canadian frontier. More than a pioneer of flight, Bland was an Unstoppable Force—a woman of enduring, adaptable competence who literally built her own future. This is the history of a life lived without apology, where the conquest of the sky was only the beginning of a lifelong experiment in absolute freedom. Approx.130 pages, 24100 word count