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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
At age 60 William Chapman began writing down his memoirs and this book contains his engaging and enjoyable diary entries in the late nineteenth century.
The book is divided as follows:
- the story of his life (called “Reminiscences concerning the life of William James Bushnell Chapman”) until 1902, written at his home Mont Verdun or Sandula, Mombolo, Angola and dated 22nd March 1918, his sixtieth birthday anniversary.
- his reminiscences from 1903 to 1916
- an account of the entry of the Trek-Boers into Angola and of their sojourn during the forty-eight years they struggled in that country under Portuguese rule, which he was still writing in 1932.
Chapman grew up in Cape Town but was determined to go to Damaraland, being bent on following the life his father had led. He succumbed to the call of freedom and his ambition to become a big game hunter. He desired to see the hunting fields, the forests, the game, and everything he had read of in books of travel, He left Table Bay in 1874 for Walvis Bay and started his adventures from there. He tells of his life as a trader, also active in hunting, transport riding, road building, cattle farming, agriculture, gold prospecting, and an agent for the supply of wagons. Chapman’s narrations of his journeys, travels and encounters are fascinating and give insight into the adventurous life at that time.
Through these diaries, and with extensive research by Nicol Stassen, we are offered a unique insight into Chapmans’s journeys, travels and encounters.
A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of
England and Wales. In the Victorian era, the name Bradshaw became
synonymous with reliable information on travelling the nation's
blossoming network of railways. Published in 1904, Canals and
Navigable Rivers was the first guide to planning journeys on the
inland waterways of England and Wales. Noting bridges, locks,
distances and commercial use, it explores the routes, operation and
history of the network, and gives commentary on the areas through
which it passed. Compiled at a time when the railways had largely
supplanted the waterways, it paints a fascinating portrait of the
Edwardian canal system as it began to fall into gentle decay. This
facsimile edition of the original book now offers a different
perspective for canal boaters and walkers, and gives invaluable
information about waterways now lost.
When Dreams Collide is Nicholas Allan's intimate pilgrimage across
the former states of Yugoslavia. Shedding the received knowledge of
headlines, he explores the splintered co-evolution of these lands
over the last ten centuries, guided by the inimitable Rebecca
West's masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Written 80 years in
the past, West's account serves as a fascinating reference for the
optimistic interwar years of the 20th century between the Ottoman
decline and the Nazi onset. The evolving balancing act of Tito's
Yugoslav experiment and the atrocities following its break-up were
still to come. Collapsing empires and proud young nations,
monasteries and mosques, brotherhood, hatred, war, music, frescoes,
food, costume, people, mountains, rivers and seas, the distant
rumbles of the centuries take many forms. At a turning point in his
own life, Allan is drawn to explore this complex area, through the
lens of his part Eastern European heritage. He records personal
encounters and richly drawn characters interwoven with history and
art, politics and religion (too often one and the same). Enhanced
with delightful hand-drawn maps of the Balkans including
Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and
Herzegovina, and Croatia. 73 informative photograph's showing some
the areas key historical figures including Ibrahim Rugova, Hitler,
Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Tito, Draza Mihailovic, Slobodan
Milosevic, Alecksandar Vucic, Alija Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic,
Ante Pavelic, Franjo Tudjman, and Fitzroy Maclean.
This book is without a doubt the most remarkable true account ever
written of adventure in Africa. It is the story of the life of
George Rushby, an adventurer, ivory hunter, prospector, game
rancher who immigrated to SA from Britain in search of a new life
and all the curious and violent events that befell him until as a
game ranger of Tanganyika. He faced and defeated the lion man-eters
of the Njombe district. George Rushby vows to rid the land of these
man-eaters, but he soon discovers they are unlike any lions he has
ever encountered. He gets no help in his fight from the villagers
who believe the killings to be the work of the local witchdoctor, a
man they fear to cross - when a child Rushby loves is killed, the
battle becomes personal. The reader is transported into a world of
tumultuous events, many of which baffle all rational thought.
George Rushy was duly referred to as "the prince of adventurers"
and we join him on his travels and experiences in Africa.
Wayward son of a respected clergyman, by twenty-two, Jack Keane had
seen the world. It only remained for him to visit the forbidden
cities of Makkah and Madinah, and his chance came when he steps
ashore in the Red Sea port of Jiddah. Disguised as a pilgrim he
joins a caravan to Islam's holiest cities. Stoned in Makkah, knifed
on the way to Madinah, Keane witnesses death and suffering in the
desert, as he and his fellow-pilgrims are menaced by predatory
desert tribes. His account and the mysterious affair of the "Lady
Venus", who, Keane alleged, was an Englishwoman stranded in Makkah
at the time of his visit, created a sensation in England earning
him some notoriety and helping to publicise his first two books,
Six Months in Meccah and My Journey to Medinah. These are here
republished for the first time since the 1880s. William Facey's
Introduction tells the story of Keane's life, provides a critical
appraisal of his journey, and places his account of the pilgrimage
in the context of other travellers to Islam's holy places. The
comprehensive glossary, index and map which accompany this single
volume will assist and guide readers as they join Keane on his
remarkable journey. Today, with the spotlight turned on the region
and its religion, Keane's account represents a prescient reflection
of Western attitudes of the time towards Islam and the Arab world.
'One of the non-fiction books of the year.' Andrew O' Hagan A
powerful, evocative and deeply personal journey into the world of
missing people When Francisco Garcia was just seven years old, his
father, Christobal, left his family. Unemployed, addicted to drink
and drugs, and adrift in life, Christobal decided he would rather
disappear altogether than carry on dealing with the problems in
front of him. So that's what he did, leaving his young wife and
child in the dead of night. He has been missing ever since. Twenty
years on, Francisco is ready to take up the search for answers. Why
did this happen and how could it be possible? Where might his
father have gone? And is there any reason to hope for a happy
reunion? During his journey, which takes him all across Britain and
back to his father's homeland of Spain, Francisco tells the stories
of those he meets along the way: the police investigators; the
charity employees and volunteers; the once missing and those
perilously at risk around us; the families, friends and all those
left behind. If You Were There is the moving and affecting story of
one man's search for his lost family, an urgent document of where
we are now and a powerful, timeless reminder of our responsibility
to others.
From 1917 19, the Tharaud brothers immersed themselves in Morocco
while observing the determined imposition of the French
Protectorate at first hand. With unique access to both colonial
manoeuvres and a now-vanished Moroccan way of life, they settled
for periods in Marrakesh, Rabat and Fez to absorb and observe. We
join them on visits to the Sultan one day and to the shrine of Sidi
Ben Achir part shrine, part mental asylum on another. They watch
the son and heir of the Glaoui dynasty die from wounds received in
a mountain battle, and lovers weaving and ducking across the
rooftops of Fez to reach their trysting place. This is the first
translation of these vivacious works into English, giving access to
the majesty, the squalor and above all the liveliness of this
extraordinary period of Moroccan history.
This account shows the full range of Hugh Miller's interests - the
lyrical description of the scenery and accounts of beautiful
fossils show a deep affection for the Scottish landscape, while his
role as a serious religious journalist and social crusader is
highlighted in his discussions on the Disruption and the Highland
Clearances.
Dr Hisham Khatib has spent almost 40 years amassing the vast and
historically valuable collection of representations of the Near
East featured in this book. The artworks included here (paintings,
prints, maps, books, photographs, and even postcards) depict the
Holy Land during the Ottoman period (1517-1917). The stunning
images are accompanied by an engaging and deeply informative text.
A scholarly edition of a work by Tobias Smollett. The edition
presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction,
commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.
Fanny Parkes, who lived in India between 1822 and 1846, was the
ideal travel writer - courageous, indefatigably curious and
determinedly independent. Her delightful journal traces her journey
from prim memsahib, married to a minor civil servant of the Raj, to
eccentric, sitar-playing Indophile, fluent in Urdu, critical of
British rule and passionate in her appreciation of Indian culture.
Fanny is fascinated by everything, from the trial of the thugs and
the efficacy of opium on headaches to the adorning of a Hindu
bride. To read her is to get as close as one can to a true picture
of early colonial India - the sacred and the profane, the violent
and the beautiful, the straight-laced sahibs and the more eccentric
"White Mughals" who fell in love with India and did their best,
like Fanny, to build bridges across cultures.
This is the first book of its kind to include extensive analysis of
the travelogues of Baghdad in relation to historiography. This book
contains analysis of the stages of travel writing in general and
the objectives of the writers, which makes it appealing for people
who are keen to learn about the travelogues worldwide. The research
in this book encompasses a number of disciplines, including urban
history, architecture, literature, travel writing, history of
Baghdad, Islamic studies, heritage and conservation. Because of
this variety it would appeal to many academics from different
backgrounds. Apart from academics, this book would appeal to other
people who are interested in history, literature, Arabic, Islamic
cities, and learning in general. Some photos and diagrams that are
used in this book are taken from original sources that have been
rarely published before.
Chloe Chard assembles fascinating passages from late
eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century accounts of travel
in Italy, by Northern Europeans, writing in English (or, in some
cases, translated into English at the time); 'Tristes Plaisirs'
includes writings by Charles Dupaty, Maria Graham, Anna Jameson,
Sydney Morgan, Henry Matthews and Hester Lynch Piozzi. The extracts
often focus on the labile moods that contribute to the 'triste
plaisir' of travelling (as Madame de Stael termed it): moods such
as restlessness, anxiety, exhaustion, animal exuberance, sexual
excitement and piqued curiosity. The introduction considers some of
these responses in relation to the preoccupations and rhetorical
strategies of travel writing during the Romantic period and
introductory commentaries examine the ways in which the passages
take up a series of themes, around which the five chapters are
ordered: 'Pleasure', 'Rising and sinking in sublime places',
'Danger and destabilization', 'Art, unease and life', and
'Gastronomy, Gusto and the Geography of the Haunted'. -- .
This book brings together theories of spatiality and mobility with
a study of travel writing in the Victorian period to suggest that
'idleness' is an important but neglected condition of subjectivity
in that era. Contrary to familiar stereotypes of 'the Victorians'
as characterized by speed, work, and mechanized travel, this books
asserts a counter-narrative in which certain writers embraced
idleness in travel as a radical means to 're-subjectification' and
the assertion of a 'late-Romantic' sensibility. Attentive to the
historical and literary continuities between 'Romantic' and
'Victorian', the book reconstructs the Victorian discourse on
idleness. It draws on an interdisciplinary range of theorists and
brings together a fresh selection of accounts viewed through the
lens of cultural studies as well as accounts of publication history
and author biography. Travel texts from different genres (by
writers such as Anna Mary Howitt, Jerome K. Jerome and George
Gissing) are brought together as representing the different facets
of the spectrum of idleness in the Victorian context.
First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
This is the first complete English translation of a lively
travelogue written by Andronikos aka Nikandros Noukios, a Greek
from Corfu, who accompanied a diplomatic mission from Venice to
England in the middle of the sixteenth century. He describes some
of the great northern Italian cities, gives vivid impressions of
picturesque Germany, of sober but enthusiastic Lutheran church
services, and of cities on the Rhine. In the Low Countries he
visits the commercial centres and in England gives a real sense of
the excitement of London and its sights. He rather liked the
English (even giving a recipe for beer), and is clearly fascinated
by Henry VIII, his attacks on the monasteries and his break with
Rome. He then surprisingly joins up with a troop of Greek
mercenaries, but finally leaves them and returns to Italy through
France with glimpses of Fontainebleau and Francis I. We leave
Andronikos after he has visited Rome on his way back to Venice. The
book is an almost unknown source for the sixteenth century and will
certainly be of interest to historians and students. It is also an
important and little-known landmark in the development of Modern
Greek literature, especially relevant to the burgeoning modern
interest in travel writing. It is accessible and a good read.
First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an informa company.
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