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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
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Jancke's manuscript, which until now remained unpublished,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.
First published in 1735, this account focuses on the customs, food,
languages and religions of the peoples in the islands and
settlements visited. It also has remarks on the gold, ivory and
slave trades.
Artists and writers from the colder climes of northern Europe have
long felt the lure of the South of the continent. Goethe was
revitalised by his encounters with Mediterranean culture on his
journey to Italy. Nietzsche took flight southwards to begin his
life anew, while DH Lawrence sought the health-giving southern sun
in Sicily and Sardinia. But across the centuries, other outposts of
the South have provoked a similar obsession. The South Seas cast a
spell over figures such as Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson
and Paul Gauguin. The American Deep South and the southermost
reaches of Latin America have been celebrated in the works of
writers as diverse as John Muir, Jack Kerouac and Jorge Luis
Borges. While the Great White South of the Antarctic has provided
the backdrop to the darkest imaginings of Coleridge, Poe and
Lovecraft. Even London, south of the river, is a place where
novelists compete today to stake out a literary territory of their
own. Moving between geography and mythology, literature and
history, South is the first book to look at all things Southern in
one volume. It examines the idea of the South as a symbol of
freedom and escape, as well as the depository for many of our
deepest unconscious fears and desires. It also charts the history
of the South as the chosen location for the utopian visions of the
North. From the beaches of Tahiti to the streets of Buenos Aires,
from Naples to New Orleans, Merlin Coverley's brilliant and
wide-ranging study throws light on the ways in which the idea of
the South, in all its forms, has come to exert such a powerful hold
on our collective imaginations.
Invention, passion, war and exile are but some of the elements in
this revealing new insight into Paddy Leigh Fermor's many Romanian
journeys. Starting with the `great trudge' on foot through Romania
in 1934 and ending in 1990 with his assignment for The Daily
Telegraph following the fall of Ceausescu, The Vagabond and The
Princess by Alan Ogden unravels the tapestry of fact and fiction
woven by Paddy and reveals in detail the touching story of the love
affair between the youthful writer and Balasa Cantacuzino, a
beautiful Romanian Princess. After a poignant parting on the eve of
the Second World War, they were reunited some twenty-five years
later and remained in close touch until her death. Paddy had been
the great love of her life. Alan Ogden brings great insight into
this enduring and touching relationship as well putting into
context the glamorous lost world of pre-WW2 Romania.
'One of the most fascinating travel books of all time' Times
Literary Supplement 'He could not have been more 'modern' if he had
been born in the twentieth century' Evening Standard Ibn Battuta
was the only medieval traveller who is known to have visited the
lands of every Muhammadan ruler of his time and the extent of his
journeys is estimated to be at least 75,000 miles. His work
presents a descriptive account of Muhammadan society in the second
quarter of the fourteenth century, which illustrates, among other
things, how wide the sphere of influence of the Muslim merchants
was. Ibn Battuta's interest in places was subordinate to his
interest in people and his geographical knowledge was gained
entirely from personal experience. For his details he relied
exclusively on his memory, cultivated by the system of a
theological education. This edition, translated afresh from the
Arabic text, provides extensive notes which enable the journeys to
be followed in detail. Important historical and religious
background to the Travels is also added by H. A. R. Gibb.
Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) was one of the most significant
nineteenth-century British architects and a major player in the
cultural shift from the Georgian eighteenth to the Victorian
nineteenth century. Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) was one of the
most significant nineteenth-century British architects and a major
player in the cultural shift from the Georgian eighteenth to the
Victorian nineteenth century. Cockerell's travelsin the eastern
Mediterranean between 1810 and 1817 were the formative experience
of his life. His forty letters from this period, held in the
archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects and published
here for the first time, give crucial day-to-day insights into his
actions, thoughts and feelings in relation to the intricate
histories of the re-discovery and sales of the Aegina and Bassae
marbles and, equally importantly, illuminate his hugely significant
work on temple architecture and sculpture in mainland Greece, the
great cities of Asia Minor, and the significant temples of Sicily.
Drawing on these letters, and on some 150 unpublished letters sent
by his friends while they were all in Greece and now held in the
British Museum, this book elucidates what Cockerell did and why by
analyzing his methods of work and their significance. It discusses
Cockerell's aesthetic and conceptual development during his time
abroad, particularly his influential part in the changing vision of
Greek sculpture and architecture, from Winkelmann's static ideal to
one rooted in dramatic tension and contextual contingency. The book
unravels the emergence of Cockerell's crucial historical
perspective and shows how he arrived at a new view of the ancient
Greek past as made up of real lived lives, rather than just
existing as a back drop to the present. By offeringa complete
edition of the RIBA letters, this book fills a significant gap in
our understanding of the thought and work of one of the formative
spirits of nineteenth century visual historical culture. SUSAN
PEARCE is Professor Emeritus of Museum Studies, University of
Leicester. THERESA ORMROD has extensive experience in archival
research, manuscript transcription and editing.
This eight-volume facsimile set comprises firsthand accounts of
continental travel in the early nineteenth century. Anne Carter
witnesses the monarchy's return to power and the capital in her
visit to Paris, while Frances Jane Carey ranges all over the
country and particularizes the customs and everyday existence of
its people. Marianne Baillie ventures much further afield in her
1819 work, exploring France, Italy and Switzerland, among other
nations, while Elizabeth Byron daringly rides a boat along the
Loire, defying the gendarmes as she navigates the culture and
history she finds on the river's banks as well as the contemporary
political exchanges that threaten to stop her tour. Each writer is
excited about visiting new realms while also affirming the
differences between their own country's practices and landscapes
and those they witness on their Continental tours.
In 1793, Lord Macartney led the first British diplomatic mission to
China in over one hundred years. This five-volume reset edition
draws together British travel writings about China throughout the
next century. The collection ends with the Boxer Uprising which
marked the beginning of the end of informal British empire on the
Chinese mainland.
Accounts of travel to England reached unprecedented levels of
popularity in the German states in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Competition therefore increased for travel
writers to produce travelogues which offered the most authentic,
original and vibrant picture of England. The wider range of
narrative strategies which travellers consequently deployed
increasingly drew on the emotional responses of their audience
whether to serve a political purpose, show concern for the darker
side to the Industrial Revolution or simply demonstrate the
humanitarian interests of the travellers themselves. In this
broad-ranging study, Alison E. Martin draws on a variety of
travellers, men and women, canonical and forgotten, to chart the
fascinating variety of styles and approaches which mark this highly
interdisciplinary genre.
'We had climbed a mountain and crossed a pass; been wet, cold,
hungry, frightened, and withal happy. One more Himalayan season was
over. It was time to begin thinking of the next. "Strenuousness is
the immortal path, sloth is the way of death".' First published in
1946, the scope of H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's When Men & Mountains
Meet is broad, covering his disastrous expedition to the Assam
Himalaya, a small exploratory trip into Sikkim, and then his
wartime heroics. In the thirties, Assam was largely unknown and
unexplored. It proved a challenging environment for Tilman's party,
the jungle leaving the men mosquito-bitten and suffering with
tropical diseases, and thwarting their mountaineering success.
Sikkim proved altogether more successful. Tilman, who is once again
happy and healthy, enjoys some exploratory ice climbing and
discovers Abominable Snowman tracks, particularly remarkable as the
creature appeared to be wearing boots - 'there is no reason why he
should not have picked up a discarded pair at the German Base Camp
and put them to their obvious use'. And then, in 1939, war breaks
out. With good humour and characteristic understatement we hear
about Tilman's remarkable Second World War. After digging gun pits
on the Belgian border and in Iraq, he was dropped by parachute
behind enemy lines to fight alongside Albanian and Italian
partisans. Tilman was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for
his efforts - and the keys to the city of Belluno, which he helped
save from occupation and destruction. Tilman's comments on the
German approach to Himalayan climbing could equally be applied to
his guerrilla warfare ethos. 'They spent a lot of time and money
and lost a lot of climbers and porters, through bad luck and more
often through bad judgement.' While elsewhere the war machine
rumbled on, Tilman's war was fast, exciting, lightweight and
foolhardy - and makes for gripping reading.
Early modern Europe was obsessed with borders and travel. It found,
imagined and manufactured new borders for its travellers to cross.
It celebrated and feared borders as places or states where meanings
were charged and changed. In early modern Europe crossing a border
could take many forms; sailing to the Americas, visiting a hospital
or taking a trip through London's sewage system. Borders were
places that people lived on, through and against. Some were
temporary, like illness, while others claimed to be absolute, like
that between the civilized world and the savage, but, as the
chapters in this volume show, to cross any of them was an exciting,
anxious and often a potentially dangerous act. Providing a
trans-European interdisciplinary approach, the collection focuses
on three particular aspects of travel and borders: change, status
and function. To travel was to change, not only humans but texts,
words, goods and money were all in motion at this time, having a
profound influence on cultures, societies and individuals within
Europe and beyond. Likewise, status was not a fixed commodity and
the meaning and appearance of borders varied and could
simultaneously be regarded as hostile and welcoming, restrictive
and opportunistic, according to one's personal viewpoint. The
volume also emphasizes the fact that borders always serve multiple
functions, empowering and oppressing, protecting and threatening in
equal measure. By using these three concepts as measures by which
to explore a variety of subjects, Borders and Travellers in Early
Modern Europe provides a fascinating new perspective from which to
re-assess the way in which early modern Europeans viewed
themselves, their neighbours and the wider world with which they
were increasingly interacting.
One year after her successful trip across Glacier National Park
with Howard Eaton, chronicled in Through Glacier Park, mystery
novelist Mary Roberts Rinehart was back in the saddle, heading into
the rugged Western portion of the park with her family and ready
for more adventure. She wrote, looking at the daunting road ahead,
"But all this was before us then. We only knew it was summer, that
the days were warm and the nights cool, that the streams were full
of trout, that such things as telegraphs and telephones were
falling far in our rear, and that before us was the Big Adventure."
Rinehart's humor and enthusiasm about her summer-long camping
adventure through the Rocky Mountains and Cascades is full of the
newness of the experience, the wonders of the relatively unexplored
park, and the same wonders that inspire visitors today are still
fresh for a modern audience. With a foreword by her grandson, Rick
Rinehart, this edition is a classic to be enjoyed by a new
generation.
However many times it has been done, the act of casting off the
warps and letting go one's last hold of the shore at the start of a
voyage has about it something solemn and irrevocable, like
marriage, for better or for worse. Mostly Mischief's ordinary title
belies four more extraordinary voyages made by H.W. 'Bill' Tilman
covering almost 25,000 miles in both Arctic and Antarctic waters.
The first sees the pilot cutter Mischief retracing the steps of
Elizabethan explorer John Davis to the eastern entrance to the
Northwest Passage. Tilman and a companion land on the north coast
and make the hazardous crossing of Bylot Island while the remainder
of the crew make the eventful passage to the southern shore to
recover the climbing party. Back in England, Tilman refuses to
accept the condemnation of Mischief's surveyor, undertaking costly
repairs before heading back to sea for a first encounter with the
East Greenland ice. Between June 1964 and September 1965, Tilman is
at sea almost without a break. Two eventful voyages to East
Greenland in Mischief provide the entertaining bookends to his
account of the five-month voyage in the Southern Ocean as skipper
of the schooner Patanela. Tilman had been hand-picked by the
expedition leader as the navigator best able to land a team of
Australian and New Zealand climbers and scientists on Heard Island,
a tiny volcanic speck in the Furious Fifties devoid of safe
anchorages and capped by an unclimbed glaciated peak. In a separate
account of this successful voyage, Colin Putt describes the
expedition as unique - the first ascent of a mountain to start
below sea level.
A collection of writings on travels undertaken in the Victorian
era. The texts collected in these volumes show how 19th century
travel literature served the interests of empire by promoting
British political and economic values that translated into
manufacturing goods.
Juxtaposing the albums of Lady Brassey, an overlooked figure among
Victorian women travelers, with Brassey's travel books, Nancy
Micklewright takes advantage of a unique opportunity to examine the
role of photography in the 1870s and 1880s in constructing ideas
about place and empire. This study draws on a range of source
material to investigate aspects of the Brassey collection. The book
begins with an overview of Lady Brassey's life and projects, as
well as an examination of issues relevant to subsequent discussions
of the travel literature, the photographs, and the albums in which
the photographs are assembled. Lady Brassey is next considered as a
traveler and public figure, and the author gives an overview of
Brassey's travel literature, placing her in her social and
political context. Micklewright then considers the seventy volumes
of photographs which comprise the Brassey album collection, taking
an especially close look at the eight albums devoted to the Middle
East. Analyzing the specific contents and structure of the albums,
and the interplay of text and image within, she explores how the
Brasseys constructed their presentation of the region. While
confirming some earlier work about constructions of the Orient by
the British during the time, this book offers a much more detailed
and nuanced understanding of how photographic and literary
constructions were related to individual experience and identity
within a larger British identity. The first appendix explores the
illustrative relationship between the photograph albums and Lady
Brassey's travel books, yielding an understanding of the processes
involved in transferring the photographic image to a printed one,
at a particular moment in the development of book illustration. A
second appendix lists the contents and named photographers of all
seventy albums in the Brassey collection. All in all,
Micklewright's study makes a significant contribution to our
understanding of the complex and unstable social, political and
imperialist discourses in the nineteenth century.
A collection of writings on travels undertaken in the Victorian
era. The texts collected in these volumes show how 19th century
travel literature served the interests of empire by promoting
British political and economic values that translated into
manufacturing goods, import-export business, jobs, and power. Many
of the works collected here become the basis for numerous works of
popular and serious literature by Arnold, Dickens, Thackeray,
Haggard, Conrad, Kipling and many others.
The Romantic Period saw the advance of the massive British imperial
expansion that was to make it dominant for most of the 19th
century. There was a corresponding expansion in travel writings,
which, highly popular in their own time, seemed to bring exotic
realms within the grasp of the reading public and were a source for
ethnographic and cultural information about other societies.
This second set in The Collected Writings of Daniel Defoe brings
together some of his best-loved and most ambitious works, together
with others which reveal the extraordinary range of his
intellectual interests Three volumes are devoted to major
historical writings by Defoe. His Memoirs of the Church of Scotland
and History of the Union of Great Britain are included here.
Isabella Bird's account of her journeys in Korea in 1898 represents
one of the very rare accounts of that country in the latter part of
the nineteenth century. At that time Korea was virtually a
forbidden land and had only been open to foreigners for about ten
years. It was and had been under Chinese influence for centuries.
The trip was very difficult but so fascinating that, true to
character, Isabella adored it. She undertook many arduous jouneys
by land and river, observed the breathtakingly beautiful
countryside, visited the Buddhist monasteries and had many
audiences with the Korean king and his soon to be assassinated
queen. While Isabella was on her journey the Japanese invaded Korea
and she had to leave hastily, ending up in China, penniless.
This collection of Daniel Defoe's travel and historical writings
brings together some of his best-loved and most ambitious works,
together with others which reveal the extraordinary range of his
intellectual interests. His Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great
Britain, which came out between 1724 and 1726, drew on Defoe's own
travels throughout England and Scotland - often as a political
agent and spy.
The Romantic Period saw the advance of the massive British imperial
expansion that was to make it dominant for most of the 19th
century. There was a corresponding expansion in travel writings,
which, highly popular in their own time, seemed to bring exotic
realms within the grasp of the reading public and were a source for
ethnographic and cultural information about other societies.
This open access book provides an analysis of human actors and
their capacity to explore and conceptualise their own agency by
being curious, gathering knowledge, and shaping identities in their
travel reflections on Asia. Thus, the actors open windows across
time to present a profound overview of diverse descriptions and
constructions of Asia. It is demonstrated that international and
transnational history contributes to and benefits from analyses of
national and local contexts that in turn enrich our understanding
of transcultural encounters and experiences across time. The book
proposes an actor-centred contextual approach to travel writing to
recount meaningful constructions of Asia's physical, political and
spiritual landscapes. It offers comparative reflections on the
patterns of encounter across Eurasia, where from the late medieval
period an idea of civilisation was transculturally shared yet also
constantly questioned and reframed. Tailored for academic and
public discussions alike, this volume will be invaluable for both
scholars of Global History and interested audiences to stimulate
further discussions on the nature of global encounters in Asia.
'Only a man in the devil of a hurry would wish to fly to his
mountains, forgoing the lingering pleasure and mounting excitement
of a slow, arduous approach under his own exertions.' H.W. 'Bill'
Tilman's mountain travel philosophy, rooted in Africa and the
Himalaya and further developed in his early sailing adventures in
the southern hemisphere, was honed to perfection with his discovery
of Greenland as the perfect sailing destination. His Arctic voyages
in the pilot cutter Mischief proved no less challenging than his
earlier southern voyages. The shorter elapsed time made it rather
easier to find a crew but the absence of warm tropical passages
meant that similar levels of hardship were simply compressed into a
shorter timescale. First published fifty years before political
correctness became an accepted rule, Mischief in Greenland is a
treasure trove of Tilman's observational wit. In this account of
his first two West Greenland voyages, he pulls no punches with
regard to the occasional failings, leaving the reader to seek out
and discover the numerous achievements of these voyages. The
highlight of the second voyage was the identification, surveying
and successful first ascent of Mount Raleigh, first observed on the
eastern coast of Baffin Island by the Elizabethan explorer John
Davis in 1585. For the many sailors and climbers who have since
followed his lead and ventured north into those waters, Tilman
provides much practical advice, whether from his own observations
or those of Davis and the inimitable Captain Lecky. Tilman's
typical gift of understatement belies his position as one of the
greatest explorers and adventurers of the twentieth century.
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