Recollections of Tartar Steppes, first published in 1863, is a lost classic of women's travel writing that remains one of the earliest and best examples of the genre. In February 1848 the erstwhile English governess Lucy Atkinson set off from Moscow with her new husband Thomas Witlam Atkinson on a journey that would eventually last almost six years and cover more than 40,000 miles through the unknown wastes of Siberia and Central Asia. To add to the challenge, Lucy found soon after setting off out that she was pregnant. Having barely ever ridden in her life, she spent her entire pregnancy on horseback, before giving birth to a son in a yurt in a remote corner of Central Asia. Remarkably, her child survived and for the next five years accompanied his parents wherever they travelled - through the Djungar Alatau Mountains on the borders with China, the Altai Mountains in southern Siberia and then thousands of miles east to Irkutsk, Lake Baikal and the Sayan Mountains. Lucy Atkinson was not simply a passive witness on this remarkable journey, but an active participant, handling horses and camels, organizing Cossack and local guides and learning to shoot for the pot. On several occasions she levelled a rifle to protect her husband when he was threatened by brigands. Throughout this book, based on diaries she kept, she brings to life her remarkable experiences, whether sharing a meal with a Kazakh chieftain, negotiating the hire of reindeer to carry her baby son, or setting off for two weeks in an open rowing boat onto the unpredictable waters of Lake Baikal. During the bitter winters, when the Atkinsons hunkered down in one of the scattered towns of Siberia to avoid the worst of the sub-zero temperatures, she was a sensation at the soirees and parties that punctuated the long, dark evenings. Through her connections to her former employer in St Petersburg she also met with many of the exiled Decembrists and their wives, including Princess Maria Volkonsky and Princess Katherine Troubetskoy. Out of print for many years, this new edition includes a detailed introduction by Nick Fielding and Marianne Simpson - a direct descendant of Lucy Atkinson's brother Matthew - which explains the background to Lucy's travels and the fascinating events that followed her return to London and her husband's death in 1861.

Dutch Sailmaker and sailor Jan Struys' (c.1629-c.1694) account of his various overseas travels became a bestseller after its first publication in Amsterdam in 1676, and was later translated into English, French, German and Russian. This new book depicts the story of its author's life as well as the first singular analysis of the Struys text.

In Richard Pococke's Letters from the East (1737-1740), Rachel Finnegan provides edited transcripts of the full run of correspondence from Richard Pococke's famous eastern voyage from 1737-40, together with updated biographical accounts of the author and his correspondents (his mother, Elizabeth Pococke and his uncle and patron, Bishop Thomas Milles).

In 1960 the government of Trinidad invited V. S. Naipaul to revisit his native country and record his impressions. In this classic of modern travel writing he has created a deft and remarkably prescient portrait of Trinidad and four adjacent Caribbean societies-countries haunted by the legacies of slavery and colonialism and so thoroughly defined by the norms of Empire that they can scarcely believe that the Empire is ending.
In The Middle Passage, Naipaul watches a Trinidadian movie audience greeting Humphrey Bogart's appearance with cries of "That is man " He ventures into a Trinidad slum so insalubrious that the locals call it the Gaza Strip. He follows a racially charged election campaign in British Guiana (now Guyana) and marvels at the Gallic pretension of Martinique society, which maintains the fiction that its roads are extensions of France's "routes nationales." And throughout he relates the ghastly episodes of the region's colonial past and shows how they continue to inform its language, politics, and values. The result is a work of novelistic vividness and dazzling perspicacity that displays Naipaul at the peak of his powers.

Wayward son of a respected clergyman, by twenty-two, Jack Keane had seen the world. It only remained for him to visit the forbidden cities of Makkah and Madinah, and his chance came when he steps ashore in the Red Sea port of Jiddah. Disguised as a pilgrim he joins a caravan to Islam's holiest cities. Stoned in Makkah, knifed on the way to Madinah, Keane witnesses death and suffering in the desert, as he and his fellow-pilgrims are menaced by predatory desert tribes. His account and the mysterious affair of the "Lady Venus", who, Keane alleged, was an Englishwoman stranded in Makkah at the time of his visit, created a sensation in England earning him some notoriety and helping to publicise his first two books, Six Months in Meccah and My Journey to Medinah. These are here republished for the first time since the 1880s. William Facey's Introduction tells the story of Keane's life, provides a critical appraisal of his journey, and places his account of the pilgrimage in the context of other travellers to Islam's holy places. The comprehensive glossary, index and map which accompany this single volume will assist and guide readers as they join Keane on his remarkable journey. Today, with the spotlight turned on the region and its religion, Keane's account represents a prescient reflection of Western attitudes of the time towards Islam and the Arab world.

Evliya Celebi was the 17th century's most diligent, adventurous, and honest recorder, whose puckish wit and humor are laced throughout his ten-volume masterpiece. This brand new translation brings Evliya sparklingly back to life. "Well worth a read."-Irish Echo 7/2011

When Dreams Collide is Nicholas Allan's intimate pilgrimage across the former states of Yugoslavia. Shedding the received knowledge of headlines, he explores the splintered co-evolution of these lands over the last ten centuries, guided by the inimitable Rebecca West's masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Written 80 years in the past, West's account serves as a fascinating reference for the optimistic interwar years of the 20th century between the Ottoman decline and the Nazi onset. The evolving balancing act of Tito's Yugoslav experiment and the atrocities following its break-up were still to come. Collapsing empires and proud young nations, monasteries and mosques, brotherhood, hatred, war, music, frescoes, food, costume, people, mountains, rivers and seas, the distant rumbles of the centuries take many forms. At a turning point in his own life, Allan is drawn to explore this complex area, through the lens of his part Eastern European heritage. He records personal encounters and richly drawn characters interwoven with history and art, politics and religion (too often one and the same). Enhanced with delightful hand-drawn maps of the Balkans including Montenegro, Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia. 73 informative photograph's showing some the areas key historical figures including Ibrahim Rugova, Hitler, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Tito, Draza Mihailovic, Slobodan Milosevic, Alecksandar Vucic, Alija Izetbegovic, Radovan Karadzic, Ante Pavelic, Franjo Tudjman, and Fitzroy Maclean.

INTRODUCED BY JAN MORRIS '[This] gloriously ornate account of that epic journey is a classic' ROBERT MACFARLANE 'The feeling of being lost in time and geography with months and years hazily sparkling ahead is a prospect of inconjecturable magic.' In 1933, aged eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on his 'great trudge', a year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Three decades later he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure, which took him through the Low Countries, up the Rhine, through Germany, down the Danube, through Austria and Czechoslovakia, and as far as Hungary. Alone, carrying only a rucksack and with a small allowance of only a pound a week, Fermor had planned to sleep rough - to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar' - but a chance introduction in Bavaria led to comfortable stays in castles, and provided a glimpse of the old Europe of princes and peasants. Hailed as a masterpiece, A Time of Gifts is in part a coming-of-age memoir, but it is also a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that - despite its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers and grand cities - was soon to be swept away by war, modernisation and profound social change. 'Not only is this journey one of physical adventure but of cultural awakening. Architecture, art, genealogy, quirks of history and language are all devoured -- and here passed on -- with a gusto uniquely his' COLIN THUBRON, SUNDAY TIMES 'One of the most romantic books of the twentieth century, Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of a long walk across Europe is also a literary treasure, a rich blend of action and observation' GUARDIAN

Open boat cruising has never been more popular, in the doing or the reading of it; magazines, websites, associations and events around the world attest to this, and of course the countless sailors who just 'get on with it' in their own unassuming manner. Two such, some fifty years ago, long before today's explosion of activity, were Ken Duxbury and his wife B; Ken's three books recounting their adventures in the eighteen-foot Drascombe Lugger 'Lugworm' delighted many on their first appearance, yet they became unavailable for years. 'Lugworm on the Loose' describes how Ken and B quit the 'rat race' and explored the Greek islands under sail. 'Lugworm Homeward Bound' recounts their voyage home from Greece to England. 'Lugworm Island Hopping' has Ken and B exploring the Scilly Isles and the Hebrides. The light touch of Ken's writing belies the sheer ambition, resourcefulness and seamanship which infuse these exploits. And beyond pure sailing narrative, his books convey the unique engagement with land and people which is achieved by approaching under sail in a small boat.

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

“This is the most important of my books, and the one by which I most hope to be remembered – if I may hope to be remembered at all!” Amelia B Edwards, 1877. A chance visit to Egypt in 1873 by Amelia Edwards changed the future of British Egyptology forever. Her travelogue, A Thousand Miles up the Nile, would inspire generations to take up her cause to support and promote Egyptian cultural heritage. This modern reprint is accompanied by a new introduction by Carl Graves (the Egypt Exploration Society) and Anna Garnett (The Petrie Museum, UCL) reflecting on Amelia’s life and its legacy in Egyptology today. The original text is complimented by colour images of Amelia’s artwork made during or shortly after her travels, which have only previously been reproduced as black and white engravings. This is no ordinary reprint, but an essential companion to the best-seller.

First published in 1985, this is a history of the Grand Tour, undertaken by young men in the eighteenth century to complete their education - a tour usually to France, Italy and Switzerland, and sometimes encompassing Germany. Rather than being another popular treatment of the theme, this is a scholarly analysis of the motives, purposes, activities and achievements of those who made the Grand Tour. The book considers to what extent the Grand Tour did fulfil its theoretical educational function, or whether travellers merely parroted the observations of their guidebooks. It also indicates the importance of the Grand Tour in introducing foreign customs into Britain and extending the cosmopolitanism of the European upper classes.

A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's Canals and Navigable Rivers of England and Wales. In the Victorian era, the name Bradshaw became synonymous with reliable information on travelling the nation's blossoming network of railways. Published in 1904, Canals and Navigable Rivers was the first guide to planning journeys on the inland waterways of England and Wales. Noting bridges, locks, distances and commercial use, it explores the routes, operation and history of the network, and gives commentary on the areas through which it passed. Compiled at a time when the railways had largely supplanted the waterways, it paints a fascinating portrait of the Edwardian canal system as it began to fall into gentle decay. This facsimile edition of the original book now offers a different perspective for canal boaters and walkers, and gives invaluable information about waterways now lost.

First published in 2008. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In 1951 the Australian writers Charmian Clift and George Johnston left grey, post-war London for Greece. Settling first on the tiny island of Kalymnos, then Hydra, their plan was to live simply and focus on their writing, away from the noise of the big city. The result is two of Charmian Clift's best known and most loved books, the memoirs Mermaid Singing and Peel Me a Lotus. Mermaid Singing relays the culture shock and the sheer delight of their first year on the tiny sponge-fishing island of Kalymnos. Clift paints an evocative picture of the characters and sun-drenched rhythms of traditional life, long before backpackers and mass tourism descended. On Hydra, featured in the companion volume, Peel Me a Lotus, Clift and Johnston became the centre of an informal community of artists and writers including the then unknown Leonard Cohen who lodged with them, and his future girlfriend Marianne Ihlen.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first book of its kind to include extensive analysis of the travelogues of Baghdad in relation to historiography. This book contains analysis of the stages of travel writing in general and the objectives of the writers, which makes it appealing for people who are keen to learn about the travelogues worldwide. The research in this book encompasses a number of disciplines, including urban history, architecture, literature, travel writing, history of Baghdad, Islamic studies, heritage and conservation. Because of this variety it would appeal to many academics from different backgrounds. Apart from academics, this book would appeal to other people who are interested in history, literature, Arabic, Islamic cities, and learning in general. Some photos and diagrams that are used in this book are taken from original sources that have been rarely published before.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This is the first complete English translation of a lively travelogue written by Andronikos aka Nikandros Noukios, a Greek from Corfu, who accompanied a diplomatic mission from Venice to England in the middle of the sixteenth century. He describes some of the great northern Italian cities, gives vivid impressions of picturesque Germany, of sober but enthusiastic Lutheran church services, and of cities on the Rhine. In the Low Countries he visits the commercial centres and in England gives a real sense of the excitement of London and its sights. He rather liked the English (even giving a recipe for beer), and is clearly fascinated by Henry VIII, his attacks on the monasteries and his break with Rome. He then surprisingly joins up with a troop of Greek mercenaries, but finally leaves them and returns to Italy through France with glimpses of Fontainebleau and Francis I. We leave Andronikos after he has visited Rome on his way back to Venice. The book is an almost unknown source for the sixteenth century and will certainly be of interest to historians and students. It is also an important and little-known landmark in the development of Modern Greek literature, especially relevant to the burgeoning modern interest in travel writing. It is accessible and a good read.