"At last we reached a circular enclosure among the grass and scanty trees. We rushed in and it was like getting into a tropical greenhouse with the roof off. There were tall trees and long creepers making monkey ropes, large flowers hanging, great cactus trees, aloes and all sorts of beautiful things crowded together, so that one could hardly squeeze through. I should have liked to stop and stare at the vegetation but on we rushed, over walls and to the tower we had heard of, which is close to the outer wall. We did not stay even to walk round the tower but out we rushed again, like people who were taking a stolen look into an enchanted garden and were afraid of being bewitched if we remained... It was quite dark and we had to be guided by shouts to our camp and got home in a state of great wonder and delight and hope of profitable work and full assurance of the great antiquity of the ruins. Theodore was not very well and had to take quinine." [M.V.A. Bent, 4 June 1891] Thus a few lines from Mabel (Mrs J. Theodore) Bent's 1891 African travel diary on her arrival at 'Great Zimbabwe' (in present-day Zimbabwe), written for her family, serve to evoke the romance and hardships of colonial exploration for a Victorian audience. Of particular importance are Mabel's previously unpublished notebooks covering the couple's arduous wagon trek to these famous ruins, in part sponsored by the ambitious Cecil Rhodes. Theodore Bent's interpretations of these wonderful monuments sparked a controversy (one of several this maverick archaeologist was involved in over his short career) that still divides scholars today. Mabel Bent was probably the first woman to visit there and help document this major site. As tourists in Egypt and explorers in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Southern Africa, anyone interested in 19th-century travel will want to follow the wagon tracks and horse trails of the Bents across hundreds of miles of untouched African landscape. Contents: Personal diaries, travel accounts and letters relating to the Bents' travels and explorations in: Egypt (1885); Zimbabwe (1891); Ethiopia (1893); Sudan (1896); Egypt (1898). Includes extended contributions on the archaeological background to 'Great Zimbabwe' by Innocent Pikirayi, and 'The Stone Birds of Great Zimbabwe' by William J. Dewey. Additional documents, maps, and Mabel Bent's own photographs contribute to this important insight into the lives of two of the great British travellers of the nineteenth century. The Travel Chronicles of Mrs J. Theodore Bent. Mabel Bent's diaries of 1883-1898, from the archive of the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies, London. Published in three volumes: Volume I - Greece and the Levantine Littoral (2006); Volume II: The African Journeys (2012); Vol III - Southern Arabia and Persia (2010). "...Brisch and Archaeopress have done a major service by reproducing these hidden gems and rescuing Mabel Bent from relative obscurity. This collection is a valuable primary source and will be of immense interest to those interested in female travelogues, historical archaeology, or the daily experiences of European women in colonial Africa." (Reviewed in 'Journal of African History', Vol. 55/2, 2014, 296-298)

This is the story of an anthropological expedition to Albania in 1929. The author, an Albanian educator, accompanied Dr. Carleton S. Coon of Harvard University. He said that his motive in writing the book was to given an account of the rugged Highlands as seen by an Albanian, in contrast to "travel accounts written by foreign visitors" to Albania. The book presents a faithful portrayal of Northern Albania as it was some seventy years ago. Dr. Coon called the book "a remarkably full and enjoyable ethnography of a people and their culture undergoing rapid change."

Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West.

This volume covers the last leg of the party's route from the Cascades of the Columbia River to the Pacific Coast, and their stay at Fort Clatsop, near the river's mouth, until the spring of 1806. Travel and exploration were hampered by miserable weather. While in winter quarters, Lewis wrote detailed reports on natural phenomena and Indian life. These descriptions were accompanied by sketches of plants and animals as well as of Indians and their canoes, tools, and clothing.

'it appeared to me that the greatest and best feelings of the human heart were paralyzed by the relative positions of slave and owner' In Domestic Manners of the Americans, Frances Trollope recounts her travels through America between 1827 and 1830, describing her voyage up the Mississippi from New Orleans, a two-year stay in Cincinnati, and a subsequent tour of Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. A transatlantic best-seller on publication in 1832, its forthright criticisms of American manners encompassed spitting, religious extremism, ladies' dress, the relentless pursuit of money, and the unequal treatment of women, slaves, and Native Americans. Witty, satiric, and hugely entertaining, Trollope also had a serious purpose in warning her compatriots of the consequences of democratic freedoms at a time of great social change in England. Deploring slavery and the hypocrisy that sanctioned it, she fuelled abolitionist debate on both sides of the Atlantic and so impressed Mark Twain that fifty years later he considered her book to be the most accurate portrait of American life in the nineteenth century. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

'I have made up my mind (with God's leave) to go to America - and to start as soon after Christmas as it will be safe'

So wrote an exuberant Dickens shortly before his voyage to America in 1842. He was the most famous of many travellers of his time who journeyed to the New World, curious to find out about the revolutionary new civilization which had captured the English imagination. His frank, often humorous descriptions cover everything from his comically uncomfortable sea voyage to his wonder at the Niagara Falls. In general Dickens is critical of what he saw as a society ruled by money and built on slavery, with unsavoury manners and a corrupt press. His unfavourable account provoked a hostile response in America and Britain, although he was to change his opinion later.

American Notes can be read as a journey in the long-established tradition of Chaucer, Bunyan or Swift - as a progress to knowledge through varied experiences. Above all, it is a fascinating account of what was for Dickens an illuminating encounter with the New World.

This edition includes a critical introduction, chronology, explanatory notes and three appendices reflecting Dickens's changing views on America.

Despite piracy, shipwreck, brigandage, and wild beasts, Polo moved in a world of highly organized commerce. This chronicle of his travels through Asia, whether read as fact or fiction, is alive with adventures, geographical information, and descriptions of natural phenomena.

Late-18th-century Scotland comes to life, from coaching inns and gig upsets to agriculture and Edinburgh society. Fascinating edition of the travels of two young sprigs of the French aristocracy in search of the secrets of British commercial, industrial and agricultural primacy reaches its climax in this delicious volume... a notable contribution to the topographical and social history of Britain on the eve of the French revolution. COUNTRY LIFE [Richard Ollard] The most satisfying book I read in 2002... Connoisseurs of 18th-century travel books will be enraptured by this diary of a visit to Scotland by a young man from the great French family of Rochefoucauld and his Polish tutor... The diary has been translated, edited and annotated by our leading regional historian, and providesan enormous amount of fascinating detail about Scotland in the first phase of the Industrial Revolution. SUNDAY TELEGRAPH [Paul Johnson] In Norman Scarfe's two earlier books of their travels, Francois and Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, with their companion, Maximilien Lazowski, have earned their place among the most perceptive and lively commentators on late 18th-century Britain. In this third book, Alexandre and Lazowski tackle a tougher itinerary, seeing for themselves Improved farming from the Fens to the Moray Firth and back via Armagh, Dublin and North Wales, with deviations into Improved industry and trade, as at Rotherham and Paisley; Improved hospitals (notably Dr Hunter's at York); and more picturesque sights such as Fountains Abbey, Edinburgh, the fifty-foot Foyers Fall near Inverness, the Boyne valley and Llansannan. In Edinburgh they dined with Adam Smith. In the infertile Highlands, they were moved by the Highlanders, only lately permitted back into their plaids and kilts: "all their customs at stake, they faced being a former people". Through Scarfe's well-attuned translation, we see these French adventurers for ourselves: the variable hospitality of the inns ("every magnificence" in Edinburgh; "a dreadful inn" - with compensations - at Old Meldrum); and the terrifying treachery of Loch Etive. NORMAN SCARFE's twoprevious volumes of La Rochefoucauld travels are A Frenchman's Year in Suffolk and Innocent Espionage, 1785.

The classic and gorgeous accounts of two legendary naturalists' journeys through summer and winter in the north country-in two new stand-alone paperback editions When Canoe Country and Snowshoe Country were first published, in 1938 and 1944, respectively, readers were charmed by their enchanting portrayal of the wilderness of northern Minnesota. Florence Page Jaques and her husband, Francis Lee Jaques, became celebrated champions of the Boundary Waters and its majestic environs. Now, these classic books are both back in print as paperback editions. A well-traveled New York sophisticate, Florence Page Jaques fell in love with northern Minnesota during her first trips to the region, and she recounted those early experiences in Canoe Country and Snowshoe Country. She writes of the excitement of traveling by foot, canoe, snowshoe, and dogsled. Weeks of solitude canoeing through the Boundary Waters are interrupted by encounters with the denizens of the north country. In these two volumes, her vivid stories are matched by her famous husband's spectacular drawings; Francis Lee Jaques captures the delicate power of Minnesota's seasons, from the cascading falls of summer to the frozen lakes of winter.

'Full of heart.' Michael Harris, author of Solitude Being alone isn't something to endure - it's something to relish. ________ The average adult spends about a third of his or her waking time alone. Yet research suggests we aren't very good at using, never mind enjoying, alone time. Rising to the challenge, travel writer Stephanie Rosenbloom explores the joys and benefits of being alone in four mouth-watering journeys to the cities of Paris, Istanbul, Florence and New York, in four seasons. This is a book about the pleasures and benefits of savouring the moment, examining things closely, using all your senses to take in your surroundings, whether travelling to faraway places or walking the streets of your own city. Through on-the-ground observations and anecdotes, and drawing on the thinking of artists, writers and innovators who have cherished solitude, Alone Time illuminates the psychological arguments for alone time and lays bare the magic of going solo.

Alexis de Tocqueville visited Ireland in the company of his good friend Gustave de Beaumont in July and August of 1835. At the time of his visit, Tocqueville had just acquired an international reputation with the publication of the first two volumes of his celebrated Democracy in America. His profound interest in the great transition from aristocracy to democracy then taking place in the western world including Ireland was given special point in his observations. Of equal interest to Tocqueville were the problem of poverty, the pace of religion in civil society, and the intriguing ambivalence of the Irish peasant toward the law. The notes on conversations, letters to family, and vivid descriptions Tocqueville wrote on his visit to Ireland bring the problems of pre- and early-famine Ireland into sharp focus. Tocqueville was welcome everywhere, in the mansions of the Protestant bishops and in the simple homes of priests whom he accompanied on their rounds through their parishes. His visits to the poorhouse, the university, the sites of the Assizes and the Office of the Clerk of the Crown of Ireland are among the recorded visits and impressions of his journey. He noted the conditions of the towns and countryside, saw that people starved amid plenty and was told repeatedly that in Ireland the aristocracy made the problems and the poor sustained each other. He recorded conversations in their entirety. He made clear notes on what he saw and heard, often noting his own reactions. The diary and the letters that he wrote to his family about his visit to Ireland provide a rare insight into one of the seminal minds of the nineteenth century. This edition of his journal is perhaps the first serious scholarly effort to place Tocqueville's journey to Ireland in its proper intellectual, geographical, and historical context. The forty-seven episodes, with the exception of three, have been arranged in chronological order according to their occurrence. This volume includes a map of Irish roads originally produced in the atlas accompanying the ""Second Report of the Railway Commissioners, Ireland, 1838.

Follow Sue Perkins' extraordinary adventures across southern Asia in this fabulously funny travelling tale - inspired by her BBC 1 documentary series 'The Ganges with Sue Perkins' Pick of the holiday reads - Daily Mirror 'Vivid, laugh-out-loud, moving' Sunday Express 'A few years ago I was asked if I'd like to make a documentary on the Mekong River, travelling from the vast delta in Vietnam to the remote and snowy peaks of Tibet. Up until that point, the farthest East I'd been was Torremolinos, in the Costa Del Sol. Here's the thing: I am scared of flying. I have zero practical skills. I can't survive if I am more than a three minute walk from a supermarket. For the last seven years I have suffered with crippling anxiety. I bolt when panicked. I cannot bear to witness humans or animals in distress. I have no ability to learn languages. I am a terrible hypochondriac. Oh, and I am no good with boats. So I said yes.' SHORTLISTED FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR AT THE 2018 NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS 'Part memoir, part travel guide. A fab account full of wit and emotion' Prima 'An unvarnished, endearing and very funny account' Woman & Home 'Alongside laugh-out-loud travel stories, the book also provides a moving account of her coming to terms with her father's death' Daily Mirror _________ Praise for Spectacles: 'Utterly wonderful. It's very, very funny and poignant' Nina Stibbe, bestselling author of Reasons to be Cheerful 'Very funny ... reading her memoir is very like meeting her' Sunday Times 'Charming and funny .... Like going for a long, slightly drunken lunch with your naughtiest friend' Red 'Brilliantly written... fearlessly honest and full of heart, it will also make you laugh like a gibbon' Heat

Richard Twiss' "A Tour in Ireland in 1775", published in the following year, was one of the most controversial books of its period. It was based on his experiences of a five-month stay in the country. It enraged the Irish public through its unflattering representation of Ireland and its inhabitants. Since its publication it has been widely quoted as a contemporary source for Irish life, though generally cited in a negative context. Although a bestseller in its day it has not been reprinted since. This new edition includes the full collection of poems written in opposition to the book, together with contemporary illustrations of the sites and views visited by Twiss during his tour.

The 12th Egypt and Austria conference (Zagreb, 17–22 September 2018) was organised by the Egypt and Austria Society and the Faculty of the Croatian Studies of the University of Zagreb. The event took place in the Croatian Institute of History (Opatička 10, Zagreb). The main theme of the conference was current research related to the interactions between Egypt and the states of the former Habsburg Monarchy and the Ottoman Empire up to the middle of the 20th century. During the conference more than 39 papers were presented, of which 26 are presented in this proceedings volume.

Henry D. Thoreau traveled to the backwoods of Maine in 1846, 1853, and 1857. Originally published in 1864, and published now with a new introduction by Paul Theroux, this volume is a powerful telling of those journeys through a rugged and largely unspoiled land. It presents Thoreau's fullest account of the wilderness.

"The Maine Woods" is classic Thoreau: a personal story of exterior and interior discoveries in a natural setting--all conveyed in taut, masterly prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are timeless and valuable on their own. But his impassioned protest against the despoilment of nature in the name of commerce and sport, which even by the 1850s threatened to deprive Americans of the "tonic of wildness," makes "The Maine Woods" an especially vital book for our own time.

INTRODUCED BY WILLIAM ATKINS, author of The Immeasurable World 'I am merely an eccentric, a dreamer who wishes to live far from the civilized world, as a free nomad.' Isabelle Eberhardt's writing chronicles, in passionate prose, her travels in French colonial North Africa at the turn of the 20th century. Often dressed in male clothing and assuming a man's name, she worked as a war correspondent, married a Muslim non-commissioned officer, converted to Islam and survived an assassination attempt, all before dying in a flash flood at the age of 27. Desert Soul brings together her 'Wanderings' and 'The Daily Journals', detailing the ecstatic highs and the depressive lows of her short but unique and extraordinary life.

Real ladies do not travel - or so it was once said. This collection of women's travel writing dispels the notion by showing how there are few corners of the world that have not been visited by women travellers. Jane Robinson takes us on an exhilarating journey through sixteen centuries of travel writing, in the company of Isabella Bird, Karen Blixen, Christina Dodwell, Jan Morris, Dervla Murphy, Freya Stark, Rebecca West, and many more.

The classic and gorgeous accounts of two legendary naturalists' journeys through summer and winter in the north country-in two new stand-alone paperback editions When Canoe Country and Snowshoe Country were first published, in 1938 and 1944, respectively, readers were charmed by their enchanting portrayal of the wilderness of northern Minnesota. Florence Page Jaques and her husband, Francis Lee Jaques, became celebrated champions of the Boundary Waters and its majestic environs. Now, these classic books are both back in print as paperback editions. A well-traveled New York sophisticate, Florence Page Jaques fell in love with northern Minnesota during her first trips to the region, and she recounted those early experiences in Canoe Country and Snowshoe Country. She writes of the excitement of traveling by foot, canoe, snowshoe, and dogsled. Weeks of solitude canoeing through the Boundary Waters are interrupted by encounters with the denizens of the north country. In these two volumes, her vivid stories are matched by her famous husband's spectacular drawings; Francis Lee Jaques captures the delicate power of Minnesota's seasons, from the cascading falls of summer to the frozen lakes of winter.

In 1865, twenty-three-year-old William James began his studies at the Harvard Medical School. When he learned that one of his most esteemed professors, Louis Agassiz, then director of the recently established Museum of Comparative Zoology, was preparing a research expedition to Brazil, James offered his services as a voluntary collector. Over the course of a year, James kept a diary, wrote letters to his family, and sketched the plants, animals, and people he observed. During this journey, James spent time primarily in Rio de Janeiro, Belem, and Manaus, and along the rivers and tributaries of the Amazon Basin.

This volume is a critical, bilingual (English-Portuguese) edition of William James's diaries and letters and also includes reproductions of his drawings. This original material belongs to the Houghton Archives at Harvard University and is of great interest to both William James scholars and Brazilian studies experts.

Immediately popular when it first appeared around 1356, "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" became the standard account of the East for several centuries?a work that went on to influence luminaries as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, Swift, and Coleridge. Ostensibly written by an English knight, the "Travels" purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India, and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan's army and to have journeyed to ?the lands beyond countries populated by dog-headed men, cannibals, Amazons, and pygmies. This translation by the esteemed C.W.R.D. Moseley conveys the elegant style of the original, making this an intriguing blend of fact and absurdity, and offering wondrous insight into fourteenth- century conceptions of the world.

Selected by Robin Hanbury-Tenison, described by the Sunday Times as the 'greatest explorer of the last twenty years', this is a comprehensive anthology of the writings of explorers through the ages, now fully revised and updated. The ultimate in travel writing, these are the words of those who changed the world through their pioneering search for new lands, new peoples, and new experiences.
Divided into geographical sections, the book takes us to Asia with Vasco da Gama, Francis Younghusband, and Wilfred Thesiger, to the Americas with John Cabot, Sir Francis Drake, and Alexander Von Humboldt, to Africa with Dr David Livingstone and Mary Kingsley, to the Pacific with Ferdinand Magellan and James Cook, and to the Poles with Robert Peary and Wally Herbert. Driven by a desire to discover that transcends all other considerations, the vivid writings of these extraordinary people reveal what makes them go beyond the possible and earn the right to be known as

Like the ancient colossus that stood over the harbor of Rhodes, Henry Miller's The Colossus of Maroussi stands as a seminal classic in travel literature. It has preceded the footsteps of prominent travel writers such as Pico Iyer and Rolf Potts. The book Miller would later cite as his favorite began with a young woman's seductive description of Greece. Miller headed out with his friend Lawrence Durrell to explore the Grecian countryside: a flock of sheep nearly tramples the two as they lie naked on a beach; the Greek poet Katsmbalis, the "colossus" of Miller's book, stirs every rooster within earshot of the Acropolis with his own loud crowing; cold hard-boiled eggs are warmed in a village's single stove, and they stay in hotels that "have seen better days, but which have an aroma of the past."

Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern times comprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years. As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons — religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! — but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: ‘Travelling — it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!’

The Grand Tour was the classical continental trip to France and Italy, undertaken by young aristocratic men in early modern Europe, ostensibly for educational purposes. Using amusing stories and vivid quotations collected from travellers' writings, Arturo Tosi charts the rise of modern vernaculars and the standardisation of European languages. The travellers' writings provide a valuable source of information about language contact, and illuminate how socialisation with the locals led, on the one hand, to conscious borrowings from prestigious foreign peers and, on the other, to linguistic disorientation when confronted with lower-class speech and rural vernaculars. The first of its kind to approach the Grand Tour from a linguistic perspective, this book is a timely addition to this burgeoning area of study, presenting a unique case study of population movement, language change and education in early modern Europe.

In July 1789 George Cadogan Morgan, born in Bridgend, Wales, and the nephew of the celebrated radical dissenter Richard Price (1723-91), found himself caught up in the opening events of the French Revolution and its consequences. In 1808, his family left Britain for America where his son, Richard Price Morgan, travelled extensively, made a descent of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by raft and helped build some of the early American railroads. The adventures of both men are related here via letters George sent home to his family from France and through the autobiography written by his son in America.

A wonderfully quixotic, charming and surprisingly uplifting travelogue which sees Jack Cooke, author of the much-loved The Treeclimbers Guide, drive around the British Isles in a clapped-out forty-year old hearse in search of famous - and not so famous - tombs, graves and burial sites. Along the way, he launches a daredevil trespass into Highgate Cemetery at night, stumbles across the remains of the Welsh Druid who popularised cremation and has time to sit and ponder the imponderables at the graveside of the Lady of Hoy, an 18th century suicide victim whose body was kept in near condition by the bog in which she was buried. A truly unique, beautifully written and wonderfully imagined book.