This study examines and explains how British explorers visualized the African interior in the latter part of the nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the process by which this visual material was transformed into the illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid of visual representations. While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.

First published in 1937 this is a collection of articles written by the author under the pseudonym 'Waseda Eisaku' for the Japan Tourist Bureau's magazine over twenty five years. Intended to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of cultivated tourists from abroad by giving the insider's view of all things Japanese, it was published as a book just before the outbreak of World War II.

Writing in the first person, Katsumata becomes both guide and confidante, writing about his own travel experiences in Japan and about Japanese customs and practices that interest him, such as traditional incense ceremonies, or fishing with rod and creel. This personal approach results in an unusual selection of topics and itineraries including tray landscapes, old Japanese clocks, hot springs, Japanese humour, sumo wrestling, pines in Japanese scenery, the Japanese sun flag and Buddhist temple bells. The author not only describes, but draws the reader into his own experiences - his joy on buying an antiquarian book he cannot really afford, the monotony he feels when travelling too long through snowy landscapes, the delight he takes in telling you that the best bait for carp fishing is sweet potato. Katsumata's unconventional choice of subjects and his informal and individualistic writing style make this a refreshingly different guide to Japan, and a valuable record of the period in which it was written.

Smelling the Breezes is an inspiring adventure, that throws down a gauntlet about what can be achieved in a family holiday. Rather than give a leaving party, Ralph and Molly Izzard had their own plans about how to say goodbye to their home in the Middle East. They would walk the three-hundred mile spine of the Lebanese mountains, camping where ever they stopped with their four children, two donkeys and Elias (their gardener-nursemaid-friend) as their sole travelling companions.

This study examines and explains how British explorers visualized the African interior in the latter part of the nineteenth century, providing the first sustained analysis of the process by which this visual material was transformed into the illustrations in popular travel books. At that time, central Africa was, effectively, a blank canvas for Europeans, unknown and devoid of visual representations.

While previous works have concentrated on exploring the stereotyped nature of printed imagery of Africa, this study examines the actual production process of images and the books in which they were published in order to demonstrate how, why, and by whom the images were manipulated. Thus, the main focus of the work is not on the aesthetic value of pictures, but in the activities, interaction, and situations that gave birth to them in both Africa and Europe.

George Sand recounts the story of her 1838 winter in Majorca, a winter she passed in the company of Frederick Chopin. She describes the natural beauties of Majorca as well as the rumblings of approaching war.

This largely unknown travel book, written by a sporting and hunting enthusiast in 1896, recalls his journey with his wife and two dachshunds in what was then a largely unknown part of Europe. Not even Thomas Cook had conducted tours east of Trieste, and our two travelers were exploring territory less well known to the Victorian traveler at the time than Egypt or Brazil.

Carl Peter Thunberg studied at Uppsala University in Sweden where he was a favourite student of the great Linnaeus, father of modern scientific classification. He determined to travel the world and enlisted as a physician with the Dutch East India Company. He arrived in Japan in the summer of 1775 and stayed one year, the maximum continuous term permitted for a European at the time. He travelled to Edo (modern Tokyo) where he became friends with the shogun's private physician, Katsuragawa Hosshu, a notorious rake. They maintained a correspondence even after the Swede had returned to his homeland. Thunberg's 'Travels' appeared in English in 1795 and was never reprinted. This edition makes available once again Thunberg's extraordinary writings on Japan, complete with illustrations. Fully annotated and introduced by Timon Screech.

First published in 1930. The wandering Jew is a very real character in the great drama of history. He has travelled as nomad and settler, as fugitive and conqueror, as exile and colonist and as merchant and scholar. Of necessity bilingual and therefore the master of many languages, the Jew was the ideal commercial traveller and interpreter.
Based on the volume of 24 Hebrew texts of Jewish travellers by J D Eisenstein, this volume begins with the ninth century. After the sixteenth century geographical discoveries had made the whole world familiar to most people. Consequently, the wandering Jew becomes less the diplomatist or scientist but still remains a link between the scattered members of the Diaspora. The volume ends in the middle of the eighteenth century and taken as a whole provides a survey of Jewish travel during the Middle Ages. For this translation, some of the texts have been abridged, whilst retaining many of the original notes.

First published in 1927. John Macdonald (1741-96) was born, and died, a Scottish Highlander. First published at the time of the French Revolution, these memoirs of his days in service provide a rich panorama of life in the company of blind fiddlers, maid-servants, the Scottish aristocracy, soldiers, historians, Oriental Princes, servants of the East India Company and men of great wealth, including James Coutts the banker. In 1768 - as the result of an errand - it fell to Macdonald to witness the death of Laurence Sterne.
'Simply packed with interest' Sunday Times
'..a model of genuine writing' Evening Standard
'Deserves a high place among autobiographies.' Nation

First published in 1928.
'Lescarbot was a man of lively wit, and a practical sagacity and breadth of view far in advance of his time.' Spectator
'This admirable edition reveals to be a lesser-known Montaigne, and Erondelle a second Florio' Daily News
'One must be singularly hard to entertain if Lescarbot fails' Birmingham Post
Nova Francia is an account of the foundation of the first French colony in Acadia in 1606. The author, Marc Lescarbot, had an inquisitive mind and an independent outlook, with a special faculty for clear thinking, and it is this authorial style which gives the work its unique value. To read Lescarbot is to enter again into the outlook of an intelligent Frenchman of the sixteenth century.

When first published in 1928, Herbert's work enjoyed immediate success. The narrative is of considerable importance from an historical point of view, as it gives the only detailed account of the first English embassy to Persia. It also paints a graphic picture of the Perisa and the Persians in the early part of the seventeenth century, with vivid and extensive descriptions of the towns of Abbas, Lar, Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan, Ashraf, Tehran, Qazvin, Qum and Kashan.
This edition is based on the revised edition of 1677, but has in turn been edited so that the version reprinted here includes only what the author actually saw or gleaned at first hand. The notes include identification of places and a glossary of the strange or obsolete terms.

'Of all literary fakes this is surely the most impudent, ingenious, and successful. The Comtesse D'Aulnoy was never in Spain (but) she was a born traveller. Not without reason have the editors of The Broadway Travellers included her fiction in their library of fact. For, despite its falseness, it is intellectually the real thing.' Saturday Review
However her work is judged today, it seems certain that Madame D'Aulnoy was one of the most widely-read and most popular authors of her time. Seeing Spain at a strange moment in her history, it is the end of a great age. The last descendent of Charles V is king; after him the nation is destined to enter upon a new phase, under a new dynasty. After reading this journey we see and touch Spain and the reader can judge the Spanish character from a witness who saw it.

First published in 1929.
'Fire and shipwreck, fights ashore and afloat, the pitting of ceaseless patience and resource against fate, these things make one understand why the book, famous in its original tongue, has but to be savoured in translation to gain an equal popularity.' Manchester Guardian
Bontekoe's East Indian Voyage was one of the most popular books in which the Dutch seventeenth century public delighted and it continued to be reprinted throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
As well as providing an illuminating insight into the machinations of the Merchants and Directors of the East India Company and the often troubled waters of international trade and diplomacy, the account is a very personal one: of a human being battling against elemental forces, at tremendous odds, tenaciously holding on to life and coming through in the end.

'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.

First published in 1930. This volume contains letters and narratives of some of the Elizabethans who went to India. Here the beginnings of the British Indian Empire can be seen, arising out of the trading operations of the East India Company.

'A document of unique interest it is a picture of Europe at a most critical moment of its history, when the Continent was overwhelmed by misery, disease and unrest. A cool observer, without prejudice or excitement Tafur noted the symptoms of decay.' Sunday Times.
This edition, translated and edited by Malcolm Letts, was the first complete translation of Tafur in any language.

First published in 1927. 'This diary is history' The Observer
This is the first complete published edition of Teonge's Diary. The edition of 1825, besides omitting several passages, contained many faulty transcriptions which have now been corrected for this edition. An intensely human document, enlivened with sketches of the people he met and places he visited, Teonge's Diary is one of the finest accounts of life on board ship in the seventeenth century. When not at sea, Henry Teonge's life was as a parson and this edition of his Diary includes a full inventory for his Parish, providing an excellent source of historical and social information on rural life in the late 1600s.

First published in 1928.
'To read it is like seeing the scenes described' Evening Standard
'One of the world's best travel books' Spectator 'The work remains a classic worthy of reproduction' The Times
Published to critical acclaim and well known for many years afterwards this account of the journey across Mongolia to Lhasa in the early nineteenth century owes much of its success to the literary skills of its authors, made available in English for the first time by William Hazlitt and Paul Pelliot.
Among other topics the chapters cover: The French mission of Peking, Tartar manners and customs, festivals, an interview with a Tibetan Lama, the flooding of the Yellow River, Tartar veterinary surgeons, irrigation projects, comparative studies between Catholicism and Buddhism, war between two living Buddhas, and the Chinese account of Tibet.

'To read it is like seeing the scenes described' Evening Standard
'One of the world's best travel books' Spectator 'The work remains a classic worthy of reproduction' The Times Published to critical acclaim and well known for many years afterwards this account of the journey across Mongolia to Lhasa in the early nineteenth century owes much of its success to the literary skills of its authors, made available in English for the first time by William Hazlitt and Paul Pelliot.
Among other topics the chapters cover: The French mission of Peking, Tartar manners and customs, festivals, an interview with a Tibetan Lama, the flooding of the Yellow River, Tartar veterinary surgeons, irrigation projects, comparative studies between Catholicism and Buddhism, war between two living Buddhas, and the Chinese account of Tibet.

First published in 1931.
'Hall is the ideal travel-writer. He never wearies his readers, but makes them love him.' Times Literary Supplement
Basil Hall's Fragments of Voyages and Travels originally appeared in nine volumes. Miscellaneous in their topics, and arranged without any order the volumes re-issued here have been selected for their clarity and interest, both geographical and historical.
Few books give a more graphic picture of the Royal Navy a century ago and Hall's volumes are full of nautical information. Hall was also an indefatigable traveller and a keen observer who learnt Hindustani, Malay and Japanese, studied Hindu mythology, flora, fauna and geology and compiled the first ever vocabulary of the language of the Loo Choo Islands.

First published in 1931. None of the manuscripts which have come down to us represent the original form of Marco Polo's narrative, but it is clear that certain texts are closer to the lost original than others. Entrusted with the task of preparing a new Italian edition of Marco Polo, Benedetto discovered many unknown manuscripts. He carefully edited the most famous of the manuscripts (the Geographic text) and collated it with the other best known ones.
- An invaluable index has been added to Aldo Ricci's of Benedetto's text, which includes all the identifications made in the Geographic text and also later editions by Marsden (1818), Pauthier (1865) and Yule (1871).
- The difficulty of following Polo on his many journeys has also been simplified by the process of distinguishing between those places on his main route to China and his return journey by sea to Persia and those places which he visited during his stay in China and those he never visited at all.

First published in 1926. Don Juan was a Persian Moslem who became a Spanish Roman Catholic. His description of Persia and his account of the wars waged by the Persians during the sixteenth century considerably add to modern day knowledge of the history of the period. The book describes the Safavi rule as first established, and the system of government set up in the prime of Shah 'Abbas, as well as being an account of the long journey from Isfahan to Valladolid.
Guy Le Strange's comprehensive introduction places the book in its historical context, as well as providing important information on how the book was written. Many of the inaccuracies of the original text are corrected in translation with references and notes added to the index to guide the reader.

First published in 1931.
Mainly focussing on cultural and geographical aspects, Travels of an Alchemist are unique in their importance as a source for early Mongol history, enabling us as they do to fix with certainty the otherwise obscure and much disputed dates of Chingiz Khan's movements during his Western campaign. The author, a Taoist doctor, left some of the most faithful and vivid pictures ever drawn of nature and society between the Aral and the Yellow Sea.
Waley's introduction provides excellent background information with which to place the Travels in their appropriate historical, social and religious setting.