Written in response to Charles Dickens' travels in the United States in 1842, "American Notes "is a fascinating and often highly critical portrait of the young American nation. Dickens touches on subjects as diverse as Wall Street, the American prison system, slavery, and the American press.

The essays in this collection -- a selection of papers presented at the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies workshop, `Travel and Cartography from Bede to the Enlightenment' (August 22-23, 2001) - track a variety of travel narratives from the eighth century to the eighteenth. Their voyages, which extend from from the literal to the spiritual, the political, and the artistic, show how the concept of narrative mapping has changed over time, and how it encompasses cosmogony, geography, chorography, topography, and inventory. Each essay is concerned in some way with the application of the medieval geographical imagination, or with the enduring influence of that imagination upon post-medieval travel and discovery writing.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate university students and to a broad range of academics across the disciplines of literature and history. It will be of particular interest to medievalists and scholars of the early modern period and to readers of, the new (1997) scholarly journal, Studies in Travel Writing.The volume will also appeal to a more general, informed readership interested in the history of travel and the history of ideas, early contact with indigenous people, and encounters between East and West.

This guide is an aid to Irish historians on the use of travel narratives as source-material. It features a discussion of factors that need to be considered in analyzing these narratives, notably the identity of the traveller, his or her motives for travel and writing, the period and mode of travel, the itinerary followed and the content itself. Part Two of the book comprises detailed annotations of more than 100 selected English-language narratives or accounts of journeys or tours made in Ireland from the second quarter of the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century.

Like many of his contemporaries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle traveled extensively. This eloquent travelogue recreates in amusing detail the difficulties ordinary tourists encountered while travelling abroad, while at the same time giving a lucid picture of colonial life at the early part of the 20th century.

Cooper published, eventually, five volumes of travel writings in epistolary form on his journeys around western Europe, all now available from CSP. This volume describes his travels and observations with his family in large parts of Italy.

This text chronicles the 13th-century world, from Venice, the birthplace of Marco Polo, to the far reaches of Asia. Marco Polo Tells of the foreign peoples he meets as he travels by foot, horse and boat through the orient. He visits places such as Persia, Tibet, India and China where he stays at the courts of the Kublai Khan.

In 1891, New York "Sun" reporter and travel writer J. R. Spears accepted an invitation to visit Death Valley to write about the region and explore its borax mines. Spears, the first professional journalist to visit, photograph, and report on the region, provided the American reading public with an engaging and informed account of Death Valley and its surrounding desert country. Through nineteen chapters, Spears examines the 20-mule teams used in borax mining, freighting in the rugged desert landscape, and various desert characters--including "Desert Tramps" and a California bear hunter.

Long considered an important literary and regional history of Death Valley and a primary source of information, "Illustrated Sketches of Death Valley and Other Borax Deserts of the Pacific Coast" will appeal to enthusiasts of the region and of the American West.

An ardent early suffragette, Edna Brush Perkins set out in 1920 with her friend, Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, to journey into the Mojave, both women seeking to escape civilization and their struggle to secure voting rights for women. The Mojave at that time was considered to be a desolate, inaccessible region--part of the fading American frontier. Originally published in 1922, The White Heart of Mojave is Perkins' account of this journey.

Perkins' evocative writing describes the landscape and the people she encounters. As editor Peter Wild writes, this is ultimately the story of two wealthy women who enter Death Valley "as a sort of middle-aged lark" and "emerge from the trip profoundly changed."

In 1897 the Victorian novelist George Gissing undertook a brief but eventful journey in southern Italy. His itinerary took him from Naples to Reggio di Calabria, via Paola, Cosenza, Crotone and Squillace, through the area once known as Magna Graecia. Meditating on the vestiges of Greco-Roman civilization, Gissing visited tombs and temples, museums and cathedrals, in search of the imprint of antiquity and "that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood." The result was By the Ionian Sea, first published in 1901. Gissing's journey by boat, train, and carriage revealed not just the ruined glories of a classical past, but also the hardships of rural life in turn-of-the-century rural Italy. Meeting poverty-stricken peasants and corrupt local officials, he endured discomfort, danger and illness in a remote and little visited corner of Europe. Yet throughout he appreciated the warmth and generosity shown to him by local people, curious about this solitary stranger. By turns lyrical and melancholic, Gissing's masterpiece of travel writing alternates between light and dark, life and death, Paganism and Christianity. Looking at Italy in both its classical and contemporary dimensions, By the Ionian Sea celebrates Calabria's rich cultural past and beautiful landscapes while providing a candid account of the region's hardship and poverty. More than a century after its first publication, this is the first critical edition of the book in English.

In 1840, French novelist Theophile Gautier was hired by the journal "La Presse" to write regular installments of a travelogue of his journey to and around Spain. Gautier recorded his experiences and impressions and the result was the 1845 book "Voyage en Espagne" - later translated into English as "A Romantic in Spain". For Gautier, Spain promised the allure of an exotic and passionate culture; it was a revelation, he said later, like discovering his true home, the native land of his spirit. Gautier covered the olive groves of Andalucia, the vibrant street life of Madrid, the central plains of La Mancha, and the Moorish buildings of Seville and Cordoba. Gautier, travelling by mule, carriage, or wagon, came into contact with a rich panoply of people and places. Gautier reveals a Spain in transition, emerging from civil war and a feudal past into the modern world.