Annette Mary Budgett Meakin, born in 1867 in Bristol, England was a British travel author. She and her mother were known as the first English women to travel to Japan via the Trans-Siberian railway, a journey of almost 6,000 miles. Annette studied music and classics in England and Germany, earning praise from the classicist and poet A.E. Housman for her zeal at composing Latin prose and verse. Writing was her career. She was made an honorary member of the Goethe Society of Weimar for her scholarly work on the friendship of Goethe and Schiller, written in three volumes. Despite her career in writing, Meakin took on the role as a chemist’s assistant in World War I to help with the war effort. Meakin’s interest in travelling to Japan across the Trans-Siberian Railway began 1896, four years before the completion of the railroad. Meakin notes that she made it her goal to be the first English woman to travel the route from England to Japan via this railway. She and her mother, Sarah, departed from London in January 1900 and arrived in Russia in May. after delaying for a time in Paris. Describing the trip, Annette wrote that they had reduced their joint luggage to just three pieces. She described the trip in an account published the following year. Her book "A Ribbon of Iron" also described their stopovers in Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk and a trip on the nearby Yenisei River which flows to the Arctic Ocean. The Ribbon of Iron was also extensively quoted in a book by Harmon Tupper, To the Great Ocean – Siberia and the Trans-Siberian Railway. Meakin published a total of 11 works in her lifetime, including a series of letters, anthropological and political observations, and analyses of famous plays and playwrights. A Ribbon of Iron remains her most influential work. She passed away in 1959.