Henry D. Thoreau's classic "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers" is published now as a new paperback edition and includes an introduction by noted writer John McPhee. This work--unusual for its symbolism and structure, its criticism of Christian institutions, and its many-layered storytelling--was Thoreau's first published book.

In the late summer of 1839, Thoreau and his older brother John made a two-week boat-and-hiking trip from Concord, Massachusetts, to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After John's sudden death in 1842, Thoreau began to prepare a memorial account of their excursion. He wrote two drafts of this story at Walden Pond, which he continued to revise and expand until 1849, when he arranged for its publication at his own expense. The book's heterodoxy and apparent formlessness troubled its contemporary audience. Modern readers, however, have come to see it as an appropriate predecessor to "Walden," with Thoreau's story of a river journey depicting the early years of his spiritual and artistic growth.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY TARAN KHAN, author of Shadow City TRANSLATED FROM BENGALI BY NAZES AFROZ An intrepid traveller and true cosmopolitan, legendary Bengali writer Syed Mujtaba Ali spent a year and a half teaching in Kabul from 1927 to 1929. Curious to explore Afghan society, Mujtaba Ali had access to a cross-section of Kabul's population, and in In a Land Far from Home he chronicles his experiences with a keen eye and a wicked sense of humour. Mujtaba Ali's travels coincided with a critical point in Afghanistan's history: when the reformist King Amanullah tried to steer his country towards modernity by encouraging education for girls and giving them the choice of removing the burqa. Branded a 'kafir', Amanullah was overthrown by the bandit leader Bacha-e-Saqao. With striking parallels to twenty-first century events in the region, In a Land Far From Home is the only first-hand account of this tumultuous period by a non-Afghan. Providing a unique perspective, Mujtaba Ali's fascinating account is brought to life by contact with a colourful cast of characters at all levels of society -- from the garrulous Pathan Dost Muhammed and the gentle Russian giant Bolshov, to his servant, Abdur Rahman and his partner in tennis, the Crown Prince Enayatullah.

This book is one of the first studies of twentieth-century travel literature in French, tracking the form from the colonial past to the postcolonial present. Whereas most recent explorations of travel literature have addressed English-language material, Forsdick's study complements these by presenting a body of material that has previously attracted little attention, ranging from conventional travel writing to other cultural phenomena (such as the Colonial Exposition of 1931) in which changing attitudes to travel are apparent.
Travel in Twentieth-Century French and Francophone Cultures explores the evolution of attitudes to cultural diversity, explaining how each generation seems simultaneously to foretell the collapse and reinvention of "elsewhere." It also follows the progressive renegotiation of understandings of travel (and travel literature) across the twentieth century, focusing in particular on the emergence of travel narratives from France's former colonies. The book suggests that an exclusive colonial understanding of travel as a practice defined along the lines of class, gender, and ethnicity has slowly been transformed so that travel has become an enabling figure--encapsulated in notions such as James Clifford's "traveling cultures"--central to analyses of contemporary global culture. Engaging initially with Victor Segalen's early twentieth-century reflection on travel and exoticism and Albert Kahn's "Archives de la Planete," Forsdick goes on to examine a series of interrelated texts and phenomena: early African travel narratives, inter-war ethnography, post-war accounts of Citroen 2CV journeys, the travel stories of immigrant workers, the work of Nicholas Bouvier andthe Pour une litterature voyageuse movement, narratives of recent walking journeys, and contemporary Polynesian literature. In delineating a francophone space stretching far beyond metropolitan France itself, the book contributes to new understandings of French and Francophone Studies, and will also be of interest to those interested in issues of comparatism as well as colonial and postcolonial culture and identity.

"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)

Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water; he was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the best company in the world.

Artemis Cooper has drawn on years of interviews and conversations with Paddy and his closest friends as well as having complete access to his archives.

Her beautifully crafted biography portrays a man of extraordinary gifts - no one wore their learning so playfully, nor inspired such passionate friendship.

Worlds of Knowledge in Women's Travel Writing rediscovers the works of a wide range of authors from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. A stowaway on a voyage circumnavigating the globe; a nineteenth-century visitor to schools in Japan; an Indian activist undertaking a pilgrimage to Iraq-these are some of the women whose experiences come to life in this volume. Worlds of Knowledge explores travel writing as a genre for communicating information about other cultures and for testing assumptions about the nature and extent of women's expertise. The book challenges the frequent focus in travel studies on English-language texts by exploring works in French and Urdu as well as English and focusing on journeys to France, Spain, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, India, Ethiopia, Japan, Australia, and the Falkland Islands. Written by experts in a wide range of fields, this interdisciplinary volume sheds new light on the range, innovation, and erudition of travel narratives by women.

We are obsessed with 'barbarians'. They are the 'not us', who don't speak our language, or 'any language', whom we depise, fear, invade and kill; for whom we feel compassion, or admiration, and an intense sexual interest; whom we often outdo in the barbarism we impute to them; and whose suspected resemblance to us haunts our introspections and imaginings. This book looks afresh at how we have confronted the idea of 'barbarism', in ourselves and others, from the conquest of the Americas to the Nazi Holocaust, through the voices of many writers, including Montaigne, Swift and Shaw.

‘In England any person fond of natural history enjoys a great advantage … but in these fertile climates, teeming with life, the attractions are so numerous, that he is scarcely able to walk at all’

When the Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27th December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime. The journal that he kept shows a naturalist making patient observations concerning geology and natural history as well as people, places and events.  Volcanoes in the Galapagos, the Gossamer spider of Patagonia, the Australasian coral reefs and the brilliance of the firefly; all are to be found in these extraordinary writings. The insights made on the five-year voyage were to set in motion the intellectual currents that lead to the most controversial book of the Victorian age: The Origin of Species.

This volume reprints Charles Darwin’s journal in a shortened form. It contains an introduction providing a background to Darwin’s thought and work, as well as notes, maps and appendices and an essay on scientific geology and the Bible by Robert FitzRoy, Darwin’s friend and captain of the Beagle.

Why remember Eliza Fay nearly two centuries after her death? Her origins are obscure; she was not beautiful, rich, or outlandishly accomplished. Yet the letters recounting her 1779 voyage from England to India captivated E. M. Forster, who discovered them while in India and in 1925 persuaded Virginia and Leonard Woolf to publish them in England. The letters have been delighting readers ever since with their truth-is-stranger than- fiction twists and turns, their earthy humor, and their depiction of an indomitable, unstoppable woman. These days you can hop on a plane in England and be in India the next morning, but when the intrepid Mrs. Fay departed from Dover more than two hundred years ago, it was to embark on a grueling twelve-month journey through much of Europe, up the Nile, overland through the deserts of Egypt, and finally across the sea to India. Along the way she and her fellow travelers encountered wars, territorial disputes, brigands, and even imprisonment. Fay was a contemporary of Jane Austen, but her adventures are worthy of a Daniel Defoe heroine. Her letters-unfiltered, forthright, and often hilarious-bring the perils and excitements of an earlier age to life.

'If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.' William Godwin, the author's future husband, was not alone in admiring Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Wollstonecraft's most popular book during her lifetime. Not easy to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandinavia just two weeks after her first suicide attempt, on a mission from the lover whose affections she doubted, to recover his silver on a ship that had gone missing. With her baby daughter and a nursemaid, she travelled across the dramatic landscape and wrote sublime descriptions of the natural world, and the events and people she encountered. What emerges most vividly is Wollstonecraft's courage and ability to look beyond her own suffering to the turmoil around her in revolutionary Europe, and a better future. This edition includes further material on the silver ship, Wollstonecraft's personal letters to Imlay during her trip, an extract from Godwin's memoir, and a selection of contemporary reviews. 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.

HOW THE GOLDEN AGE OF TRANSATLANTIC TRAVEL BETWEEN THE WARS TRANSFORMED WOMEN'S LIVES ACROSS ALL CLASSES - A VIVID CROSS SECTION OF LIFE ON-BOARD THE ICONIC OCEAN LINERS FROM BELOW DECKS TO THE CAPTAIN'S TABLE. 'In this riveting slice of social history, Sian Evans does a brilliant job of describing the unexpected textures of life at sea...By deep diving into the archives, Sian Evans has discovered a watery in-between world where the usual rules didn't quite apply and a spirited woman could get further than she ever would on dry land. - Mail on Sunday Migrants and millionairesses, refugees and aristocrats all looking for a way to improve their lives. After WW1 a world of opportunity was opening up for women ... Before convenient air travel, transatlantic travel was the province of the great ocean liners and never more so than in the glory days of the interwar years. It was an extraordinary undertaking made by many women. Some traveled for leisure, some for work; others to find a new life, marriage, to reinvent themselves or find new opportunities. Their stories have remained largely untold - until now. Maiden Voyages is a fascinating portrait of these women, and their lives on board magnificent ocean liners as they sailed between the old and the new worlds. The ocean liner was a microcosm of contemporary society, divided by class: from the luxury of the upper deck, playground for the rich and famous, to the cramped conditions of steerage or third class travel. These iconic liners were filled with women of all ages, classes and backgrounds: celebrities and refugees, migrants and millionairesses, aristocrats and crew members. Full of incredible gossip, stories and intrigue, Maiden Voyages has a diverse cast of inspiring women - from A-listers like Josephine Baker, a dancer from St Louis who found fame in Paris, Marlene Dietrich and Wallis Simpson, Violet 'the unsinkable' Jessop, a crew member who survived the sinking of the Titanic, and entrepreneur Sibyl Colefax, a pioneering interior designer. Whichever direction they were travelling, whatever hopes they entertained, they were all under the spell of life at sea, a spell which would only break when they went ashore. Maiden Voyages is a compelling and highly entertaining account of life on board: part dream factory, part place of work, independence and escape - always moving.

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.

A scholarly edition of a work by Samuel Johnson. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Finland in the eighteenth century was not a destination for the faint-hearted. Travellers told of winter temperatures which froze brandy in the bottle, and of summer journeys when they were eaten alive by bugs and mosquitoes. But they also wrote lyrical accounts of sledging over the ice from Stockholm, and of the idyllic beauty of Finland's lakes and islands. Tony Lurcock brings to life these forgotten journeys and the travellers who made them. Many were upper-class gentlemen taking an alternative to the Grand Tour, and interested in agriculture, landscape and the picturesque. Others saw Finland as the home of a primitive race living in a virtuous 'state of nature' - but met the reality of primitiveness with mixed responses. There were also scientists, adventurers, sailors, missionaries ...Part anthology, part history, it gives a picture of Finland at a time when it was little known to the outside world.

In 1851, Robert Macalister, a Scottish gentleman living in Ireland, took a journey back to his native homeland with the intention of reacquainting himself with old friends, family, villages, and sights. By steamboat, train, and omnibus he made his way through an autumnal, industrialising Scotland to Paisley, the town of his birth. Having been absent for many years, he found landscapes and people changed, taking wonder in the modernising world whilst dwelling on those that didn't live to see his return. Along the way, for the entertainment and education of his children, Robert wrote his experiences in a journal he affectionately called 'Papa's Sketches', filling it with drawings and watercolour paintings. These scribblings and sketches give a sense of immediacy, of intimacy and warmth, and feel as vibrant to us now as they did over a hundred years ago, to Robert's own children. Here, Robert's journals are painstakingly transcribed and his sketches reproduced. Accompanying the journal, Marion Palmann's own extensive research illuminates the world in which Robert lived, giving us context, clarity, and closure to his story. Palmann presents readers with an unprecedented snapshot in the life of a father, emigre, and gentleman. Poetic, heartfelt, and at times startlingly modern, these journals have a lasting appeal that Robert Macalister couldn't have guessed at, sketching on a cold, autumnal day in 1851.

Lady Anne Blunt was a woman ahead of her time. After marrying the poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt in 1869, the pair travelled extensively in the Middle East, developing an especial fondness for the region and its people. In this book, Lisa Lacy explores the life, travels and political ideas of Lady Anne. With a broad knowledge of the Arab world, she challenged prevailing assumptions and, as a result of her aristocratic heritage, exerted strong influence in British political circles. Her extensive journeys in the Mediterranean region, North Africa, Egypt, Arabia, Syria, Iraq and Persia formed the basis of her knowledge about the Middle East. She pursued an intimate knowledge of Bedouin life in Arabia, the town culture of Syria and Mesopotamia and the politics of nationalism in Egypt. Her husband, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, gained a reputation as an anti-imperialist political activist. Lacy shows that Lady Anne was her husband's partner in marriage, politics and travel and exerted strong influence not only on his ideas, but on the ideas of the British political elite of the era.

Leaving behind Thailand after the 2004 Tsunami, Ben, aged 19, made a life challenging journey without GPS or mobile phone to cross 11 countries in 8 months covering at least 16,000 miles, not including the occasional detour or missed direction. This is his log of the journey home... "What comes through most clearly is the sheer excitement of travelling in SE Asia when you're young, and seeing so many amazing things for the first time. This is a great account of the traveller's life, in which random encounters become critical junctures and you find yourself somewhere unfamiliar every day." Tom Feiling - "Short walks in Bogota"