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.

'Oliver is an evocative storyteller, vividly bringing his tales to life' BBC History From Genghis Khan's domination on earth to Armstrong's first steps on the moon, discover the 100 moments that defined humanity and shaped our world forever. Neil Oliver takes us on a whistle-stop tour around the world and through a million years to give us this unique and invaluable grasp of how human history pieces together. From the east to the west, north to south, these 100 moments act like stepping stones allowing us to make sense of how these pivotal events have shaped the world we know today. Including many moments readers will expect - from the advent of the printing press to the birth of the internet - there are also surprises, and with them, some remarkable, unforgettable stories that give a whole new insight on our past. From the bestselling author of The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places, this is outstanding new history of how our world was made from 5000 BC to the present. ********************* Praise for Neil Oliver 'Neil Oliver writes beautifully - bringing the past to life and letting us see ourselves in a new light.' - Professor Alice Roberts 'Brilliantly demonstrates Neil's mastery of the broad sweep of British history and landscape.' - Dan Snow 'Highly-crafted...a vivid, pungent history.' - TLS 'Compelling' - Daily Mail

‘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.

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.

'A roaring tale ... remains as vivid and exciting today as it was on publication in 1697' Guardian The pirate and adventurer William Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, and took notes wherever he went. This is his frank, vivid account of his buccaneering sea voyages around the world, from the Caribbean to the Pacific and East Indies. Filled with accounts of raids, escapes, wrecks and storms, it also contains precise observations of people, places, animals and food (including the first English accounts of guacamole, mango chutney and chopsticks). A bestseller on publication, this unique record of the colonial age influenced Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and consequently the whole of English literature. Edited with an Introduction by Nicholas Thomas

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.

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