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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
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My Unknown Chum
(Paperback)
Aguecheek; Foreword by Henry Garrity; Charles Bullard Fairbanks
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R615
Discovery Miles 6 150
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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At the height of his career, around the time he was working on
Great Expectations and Our Mutual Friend, Charles Dickens wrote a
series of sketches, mostly set in London, which he collected as The
Uncommercial Traveller. In the persona of 'the Uncommercial',
Dickens wanders the city streets and brings London, its
inhabitants, commerce and entertainment vividly to life. Sometimes
autobiographical, as childhood experiences are interwoven with
adult memories, the sketches include visits to the Paris Morgue,
the Liverpool docks, a workhouse, a school for poor children, and
the theatre. They also describe the perils of travel, including
seasickness, shipwreck, the coming of the railways, and the
wretchedness of dining in English hotels and restaurants. The work
is quintessential Dickens, with each piece showcasing his
imaginative writing style, his keen observational powers, and his
characteristic wit. In this edition Daniel Tyler explores Dickens's
fascination with the city and the book's connections with concerns
evident in his fiction: social injustice, human mortality, a
fascination with death and the passing of time. Often funny,
sometimes indignant, always exuberant, The Uncommercial Traveller
is a revelatory encounter with Dickens, and the Victorian city he
knew so well.
Gijsbert Heeck (1619-1669) was a medicinal specialist with the
Dutch East India Company (VOC). His journal is based on the daily
notes he made during his third trip to the East. This volume
carries the selections from his journal that deal with Siam,
accompanied by the original Dutch text. Heeck reveals how Siamese
authorities reacted to a violent confrontation between the Dutch
and the Portuguese. He gives a detailed description of the Dutch
lodge in Ayutthaya, and also bits of information on the
relationships of local Dutch men with indigenous women. His record
of villages along the Chao Phraya River specializing in the making
of coffins, preparing and selling firewood, painting, and producing
earthenware, signal the existence of a complex economy in this part
of Siam. Compared with the other seventeenth-century descriptions
primarily of the landscape, Heeck's journals provide more
information on population, scenery, traffic, trade, and religious
establishments than all the others combined. He also provides a
unique early perspective on local social arrangements and political
intrigue, and on interactions between the Dutch and the locals.
Barend Jan Terwiel recently published Thailand's Political History:
From the Fall of Ayutthaya until Recent Times.
Until the 1880s, British travellers to Arabia were for the most
part wealthy dilettantes who could fund their travels from private
means. With the advent of an Imperial presence in the region, as
the British seized power in Egypt, the very nature of travel to the
Middle East changed. Suddenly, ordinary men and women found
themselves visiting the region as British influence increased.
Missionaries, soldiers and spies as well as tourists and explorers
started to visit the area, creating an ever bigger supply of
writers, and market for their books. In a similar fashion, as the
Empire receded in the wake of World War II, so did the whole
tradition of Middle East travel writing. In this elegantly crafted
book, James Canton examines over one hundred primary sources, from
forgotten gems to the classics of T E Lawrence, Thesiger and
Philby. He analyses the relationship between Empire and author,
showing how the one influenced the other, leading to a vast array
of texts that might never have been produced had it not been for
the ambitions of Imperial Britain. This work makes for essential
reading for all of those interested in the literature of Empire,
travel writing and the Middle East.
Within 'Sirens and Seriemas', Paul Brooke explores the wild places
of Brazil through photography and poetry. A former biologist and
naturalist, Brooke travelled the Amazon and Pantanal regions of
Brazil studying culture, history and natural history. The poems
address pressing environmental issues such as deforestation,
extinction, overhunting, overpopulation, urbanization and wildness.
The photographs chronicle the amazing beauty and danger, the
culture of Amazonian peoples and multi-colored landscapes.
The small, handwritten volume which is Robert Marten's diary of his
travels in East Anglia is carefully conserved in the Norfolk Record
Office. Marten writes of Great Yarmouth, where he landed after the
journey by steamer from London, of Norwich as the county town of
Norfolk and of Cromer, where he and his family enjoyed several days
exploring. His picture of the county in September 1825, combined
with the detail in his pencil sketches, reveals an early 19th
century world to us. Editor Elizabeth Larby has carefully annotated
the text, providing a context to further our understanding of the
journey and the age.
'Their fruits be diverse and plentiful, as nutmegs, ginger, long
pepper, lemons, cucumbers, cocos, sago, with divers other sorts...'
Scholar, spy, diplomat and supreme propagandist for Elizabethan sea
power, Richard Hakluyt's accounts of famed explorers mythologised a
nation growing rapidly aware of the size and strangeness of the
world - and determined to dominate it. Introducing Little Black
Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black
Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin
Classics, with books from around the world and across many
centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London
to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th
century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical
and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and
inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions.
Richard Hakluyt (c 1552-1616). Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries is
available in Penguin Classics.
In the summer of 1844, taking a break from novel-writing, the
thirty-two-year-old Charles Dickens embarked on a journey to Italy
with his wife, his five children and his young sister-in-law.
Struck by the scenery and the rapid diorama of monuments and
novelties around him, the celebrated author of Oliver Twist and A
Christmas Carol captured his experiences and impressions in vivid
detail. The result is a travelogue like no other, written by one of
the finest writers of all time. Abounding in colour and humour, and
interspersed with unforgettable set pieces, such as an eyewitness
account of the beheading of a robber in Rome and a hilarious
description of a tour guide's ruinous tumble down the slope of
Mount Vesuvius, Pictures from Italy is further proof of Charles
Dickens's genius and versatility.
In the summer of 1883 Belgian travel writer Jules Leclercq spent
ten days on horseback in Yellowstone, the world's first national
park, exploring myriad natural wonders: astonishing geysers,
majestic waterfalls, the vast lake, and the breathtaking canyon. He
also recorded the considerable human activity, including the
rampant vandalism. Leclercq's account of his travels is itself a
small marvel blending natural history, firsthand impressions,
scientific lore, and anecdote. Along with his observations on the
park's long-rumoured fountains of boiling water and mountains of
glass, Leclercq describes camping near geysers, washing clothes in
a bubbling hot spring, and meeting such diverse characters as local
guides and tourists from the United States and Europe. Notables
including former president Ulysses S. Grant and then-president
Chester A. Arthur were also in the park that summer to inaugurate
the newly completed leg of the Northern Pacific Railroad. A
sensation in Europe, the book was never published in English. This
deft translation at long last makes available to English-speaking
readers a masterpiece of western American travel writing that is a
fascinating historical document in its own right.
FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED THE GRAN TOUR AND THE MARMALADE
DIARIES An irreverent homage to the '95 travel classic. 'It would
be wrong to view this book as just a highly accomplished homage to
a personal hero. Aitken's politics, as much as his humour, are
firmly in the spotlight, and Dear Bill Bryson achieves more than
its title (possibly even its author) intended.' Manchester Review
In 2013, travel writer Ben Aitken decided to follow in the
footsteps of his hero - literally - and started a journey around
the UK, tracing the trip taken by Bill Bryson in his classic
tribute to the British Isles, Notes from a Small Island. Staying at
the same hotels, ordering the same food, and even spending the same
amount of time in the bath, Aitken's homage - updated and with a
new preface for 2022 - is filled with wit, insight and humour.
West Africa in the 1970s was a volatile melange of old and new; of
aspiration, corruption, power and influence. In its midst, Ian
Mathie laboured in his role as a water engineer to help improve the
lives of ordinary people. His work brought him in contact with
presidents, kings, emperors, chiefs and a succession of
extraordinary characters. Circumstances contrived to place him at
dinners with four heads of state whose rule had immense impact,
positive and negative, on their countries and on West and Central
Africa: Mobutu of Zaire, Traore of Mali, Senghor of Senegal and
Eyadema of Togo. In 'Supper with the President', he recalls the
events and the insights they gave him, interweaving those
experiences with true stories of other extraordinary brushes with
sorcery, slavery, wildlife conservation, desert travel and a
jail-break that could only happen in Africa.
In 1598 merchants of the City of London paid for a Present to be
given by Queen Elizabeth to Sultan Mehmet III of Turkey. In return
the merchants hoped to secure trading concessions, and the Virgin
Queen to turn the Sultan's military might on her Spanish enemies.
The Present was a carved, painted and gilded cabinet about sixteen
feet high, six feetwideand five feet deep. It contained a chiming
clock with jewel-encrusted moving figures combined with an
automatic organ, which could play tunes on its own for six hours -
or by hand to the point of exhaustion. The Present was dismantled
and dispatched on a merchant ship early in 1599. It took six months
to get from London to Constantinople. With it went four craftsmen.
They were Thomas Dallam the organ builder, John Harvey the
engineer, Michael Watson the carpenter and Rowland Buckett the
painter. Dallam was just twenty four years old. On their odyssey
they encountered storms, volcanoes, exotic animals, foreign food,
good wine, pirates, brigands, Moors, Turks, Greeks, Jews, beautiful
women, barbarous men, kings and pashas, armies on the march,
janissaries, eunuchs, slaves, dwarves and finally the most powerful
man in the known world, the Great Turk himself. Faithfully
translated into modern prose, unembellished and unedited, this
illuminating historical source reads as if its Elizabethan author
were alive today.
A remarkable collection of charming and eloquent letters that
contain the seeds of Tocqueville's later masterful account of
American democracy Young Alexis de Tocqueville arrived in the
United States for the first time in May 1831, commissioned by the
French government to study the American prison system. For the next
nine months he and his companion, Gustave de Beaumont, traveled and
observed not only prisons but also the political, economic, and
social systems of the early republic. Along the way, they
frequently reported back to friends and family members in France.
This book presents the first translation of the complete letters
Tocqueville wrote during that seminal journey, accompanied by
excerpts from Beaumont's correspondence that provide details or
different perspectives on the places, people, and American life and
attitudes the travelers encountered. These delightful letters
provide an intimate portrait of the complicated, talented
Tocqueville, who opened himself without prejudice to the world of
Jacksonian America. Moreover, they contain many of the impressions
and ideas that served as preliminary sketches for Democracy in
America, his classic account of the American democratic system that
remains an important reference work to this day. Accessible, witty,
and charming, the letters Tocqueville penned while in America are
of major interest to general readers, scholars, and students alike.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, travelling within North
American borders or beyond to exotic locations was difficult at
best and disastrous at worst. Mary Schaffer, born into a
Pennsylvania-based Quaker family in 1861, not only conquered
international travel but also excelled as an explorer, surveyor and
photographer in the backcountry of Canada's Rocky Mountains and the
isolated communities of Japan and Formosa (now Taiwan). Michale
Lang's new book features more than 200 of Mary Schaffer's
colourful, hand-painted lantern slides from the archives of the
Whyte Musem of the Canadian Rockies. These unique works of art
detail some of the indigenous people and breathtaking landscapes of
the Rocky Mountains, along with tribal communities of Japan and
Formosa. Schaffer's writing, Michale Lang's accompanying narrative
and the book's overall design (inspired by the work of Barbara
Hodgson, author and designer of "The Tattooed Map," "No Place for a
Lady and Opium") opens a unique window on the Victorian obsession
with international travel and discovery.
A hard-headed but often hilarious guide to the pleasures and
pitfalls of travel by one of Britain's favourite writers.
After the War of 1812, British travelers, intensely curious
about the United States, poured across the Atlantic. Hundreds
published their impressions in lively, quarrelsome books that
infuriated and enchanted Americans and Britons alike. Most of these
volumes have been out of print for a century or more.
Here Roger Haydon brings together forty-two excerpts from one
generation of these travelers' accounts, between 1815 and 1845,
when New York State was a microcosm of the country. In his
introduction and prefaces to each selection he describes the kinds
of tourists who visited and how they traveled, assessing the
general accuracy of their accounts, and provides pertinent
background information.
The readings follow the period's most popular itinerary up the
Hudson Valley through Albany and its environs on to the spas and
the Champlain Valley, across the state via the Erie Canal, the
Genesee Valley, and the Finger Lakes to the Niagara Frontier, and
down into the Southern Tier to record in vivid detail the
generation that saw New York State come to dominate the nation. In
Upstate Travels, these travelers' voices are accessible again to
entertain and inform all who are interested in New York history.
Bibliography, index, and dozens of period illustrations are
included."
Unexpectedly in 1958, an irreverent British journalist and
Australian cartoonist duo were granted visas to visit Communist
China at its most closed and inscrutable. Emerging from the
writings of Kirwan Ward and the drawings of Paul Rigby is a picture
of China at a key moment in its history--still feeding off the
exhilaration of the creation of "People's China" in 1949 and full
of optimism and blind idealism. A rich collection of insights and
observations tinged with skepticism and good humor, this record
offers a western perspective of China during Mao Tse-tung's
leadership.
The Home of the Blizzard is a tale of discovery and adventure, of
pioneering deeds, great courage, heart-stopping rescues and heroic
endurance. This is Mawson's own account of his years spent in
sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds. At its heart is the
epic journey of 1912-13, during which both his companions perished.
Told in a laconic but gripping style, this is the classic account
of the struggle for survival of the Australasian Antarctic
Expedition - a journey which mapped more of Antarctica than any
expedition before or since. The photographs included in this book
were taken on the journey by Frank Hurley, later to achieve fame on
Sir Ernest Shackleton's Endurance expedition. 'One of the greatest
accounts of polar survival in history.' - Sir Ranulph Fiennes
'A Latin American James Dean or Jack Kerouac' Washington Post 'It's
true; Marxists just wanna have fun... a revolutionary bestseller'
Guardian At the age of twenty-three, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and his
friend Alberto Granado set out from their native Argentina to
explore their continent, with only a single 1939 Norton motorcycle
to carry them, nicknamed La Poderosa ('the powerful one'). They
travelled not to visit the usual tourist attractions, but to meet
ordinary people and understand Latin American life. In amidst the
tales of youthful adventures - of women, wine, thrilling escapes
and the power of friendship - the young Che also learns first-hand
about poverty, philosophy and philosophy and forms himself into the
man who would become the world's most famous and admired
revolutionary and freedom fighter. 'For every comic escapade of the
carefree roustabout there is an equally eye-opening moment in the
development of the future revolutionary leader. By the end of the
journey, a politicized Guevara has emerged to predict his own
legendary future' Time
"If my fellow-traveller had lived, he intended to have put together
in book form such information as we had gathered about Southern
Arabia. Now, as he died four days after our return from our last
journey there, I have had to undertake the task myself. It has been
very sad to me, but I have been helped by knowing that, however
imperfect this book may be, what is written here will surely be a
help to those who, by following in our footsteps, will be able to
get beyond them, and to whom I so heartily wish success and a Happy
Home-coming, the best wish a traveller may have." So Mabel Bent
(Mrs J. Theodore Bent) begins her Preface to Southern Arabia, one
of the classic travel books written in English about this
ever-fascinating region, in which she details the couple's travels
over a ten-year period. A testimony to the book's high regard is
that, since publication in 1900, it has rarely been out-of-print.
Mabel Bent continues in her Preface to inform the reader that her
volume is drawn in part from the note-books of her husband, her
fellow-traveller, the redoubtable J. Theodore Bent (1852-97), and
also "...from the 'Chronicles' that I always wrote during our
journeys". After more than a hundred years, and for the first time,
these personal Chronicles on 'South Arabia' are published in World
Enough, and Time: The Chronicles of Mabel Bent. Vol. III and are of
significant interest to Arabists and those enthusiasts who will
want to have Mabel's on-the-spot account of their adventures and
archaeological and ethnographical discoveries. Also included in
this present volume is Mabel Bent's previously unpublished
Chronicle of their long journey through Persia, from south to north
in 1889. Contents: Bahrein and Persia, 1889: The Hadhramaut,
1893-5; Socotra and the lands of the Fadhli and Yafai, 1896-7.
Personal letters, 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.
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