A collection of the greatest women's travel writing selected by journalist and presenter Mariella Frostrup. From Constantinople to Crimea; from Antarctica to the Andes. Throughout history adventurous women have made epic, record-breaking journeys under perilous circumstances. Whether escaping constricted societies back home or propelled by a desire for independence, footloose females have ventured to the four corners of the earth and recorded their exploits for posterity. For too long their triumphs have been overshadowed by those of their male counterparts, whose honourable failures make bigger news. In curating this collection of first-hand accounts, broadcaster, writer and traveller Mariella Frostrup puts female explorers back on the map. Her selection includes explorers from the 1700s to the present day, from iconic heroines to lesser-known eccentrics, celebrating 300 years of wild women and their amazing adventures over land, sea and air. Reviews for Wild Women: 'A stirring whistle-stop tour, led by women who often risked disapproval in leaving home to roam the world' Vanity Fair 'Like any good travel book, Wild Women succeeds in casting the reader's mind off on journeys of its own, inspiring fresh plans and what the Germans call Fernweh, or a longing for faraway places' TLS 'Required reading for anyone who assumed that 'the road less travelled' was a solely masculine preserve' Sunday Independent

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.

In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he has created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacent Caribbean societies-countries haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empire that they can scarcely believe that the Empire is ending.
In The Middle Passage, Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movie audience greeting Humphrey Bogart's appearance with cries of "That is man " He ventures into a Trinidad slum so insalubrious that the locals call it the Gaza Strip. He follows a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at the Gallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains the fiction that its roads are extensions of France's "routes nationales." And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes of the region's colonial past and shows how they continue to inform its language, politics, and values. The result is a work of novelistic vividness and dazzling perspicacity that displays Naipaul at the peak of his powers.

For centuries, travel was an important part of a gardener's initial and continuing professional training. Educational journeys to parks and gardens at home and abroad were consistently recorded in lengthy reports and articles for professional journals. The travel report by Hans Jancke (1850-1920), a court gardener who served the Prussian kings in Potsdam, Germany, is typical of this genre. Jancke's manuscript, which until now remained unpublished, describes his 1874-1875 apprenticeship at Knowsley, the seat of the Earl of Derby near Liverpool, England.

'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.

In 1872, Isabella Bird, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes 'in search of health' and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode her horse through the American Wild West, a terrain only newly opened to pioneer settlement. The letters that make up this volume were first published in 1879. They tell of magnificent, unspoiled landscapes and abundant wildlife, of encounters with rattlesnakes, wolves, pumas and grizzly bears, and her reactions to the volatile passions of the miners and pioneer settlers. A classic account of a truly astounding journey.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The lines, circles, ticks, hooks, dots and dashes of Pitman shorthand used by some postcard writers during the early twentieth century are obscure to most people. Could the mysterious messages contain scandalous gossip, tales of adventure or declarations of undying love? Fifty Mysterious Postcards presents fascinating examples from the 'Golden Age' of the postcard, each with a message written in the dying art of Pitman shorthand. The rules of Pitman have changed since the postcards were written and posted over 100 years ago, but careful transcription has unlocked their meaning to bring stories of penfriends, sweethearts, holidays and the First World War to life once more.

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.

In the summer of 1936, W. H. Auden and Louis MacNeice visited Iceland on commission to write a travel book, but found themselves capturing concerns on a scale that were far more international. 'Though writing in a "holiday" spirit,' commented Auden, 'its authors were all the time conscious of a threatening horizon to their picnic - world-wide unemployment, Hitler growing everyday more powerful and a world-war more inevitable.' The result is the remarkable Letters from Iceland, a collaboration in poetry and prose, reportage and correspondence, published in 1937 with the Spanish Civil War newly in progress, beneath the shadow of looming world war.

First published in 2005. 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.

In 1869, Hayyim Habshush, a Yemeni Jew, accompanied the European orientalist Joseph Halevy on his archaeological tour of Yemen. Twenty years later, Habshush wrote A Vision of Yemen, a memoir of their travels, that provides a vivid account of daily life, religion, and politics. More than a simple travelogue, it is a work of trickster-tales, thick anthropological descriptions, and reflections on Jewish-Muslim relations. At its heart lies the fractious and intimate relationship between the Yemeni coppersmith and the "enlightened" European scholar and the collision between the cultures each represents. The book thus offers a powerful indigenous response to European Orientalism. This edition is the first English translation of Habshush's writings from the original Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew and includes an accessible historical introduction to the work. The translation maintains Habshush's gripping style and rich portrayal of the diverse communities and cultures of Yemen, offering a potent mixture of artful storytelling and cultural criticism, suffused with humor and empathy. Habshush writes about the daily lives of men and women, rich and poor, Jewish and Muslim, during a turbulent period of war and both Ottoman and European imperialist encroachment. With this translation, Alan Verskin recovers the lost voice of a man passionately committed to his land and people.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

** Winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize ** Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents - the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair. For readers who were swept up in Laura Cumming's On Chapel Sands, Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey and Francesca Wade's Square Haunting. A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age, they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House - Julia's grandfather. So begins a life-changing quest to understand the affair, which had profound repercussions for Julia's family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War II. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, The Shadowy Third opens up a world with complex attitudes to love and sex, duty and ambition, and to writing itself.

Evliya Celebi was the 17th century's most diligent, adventurous, and honest recorder, whose puckish wit and humor are laced throughout his ten-volume masterpiece. This brand new translation brings Evliya sparklingly back to life. "Well worth a read."-Irish Echo 7/2011