Volume 2 of great explorer's classic account of explorations of lakes of Central Africa, perilous journey down unexplored Congo River. Incredible hardships, perseverance. Total in set: 149 illustrations. Map.

"Here is a valuable and rare document providing a woman's perspective on a western passage that has received little attention from historians. Margaret Dwight's journal gives us a first-hand account that goes way beyond the usual reckoning of miles traveled and notes on the weather. She provides an intimate view of the people on the trail. From her observations we get a sense of the back-country settlements of Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1810, the language, the sounds, and even the smells of this early American West. Her journal is full of witty and occasionally sarcastic remarks. For all her prejudices and self-admitted pride, she emerges as a likeable person and valuable guide."-Jay Gitlin, in his introduction. In his introduction, Jay Gitlin, a professor of history at Yale University, says more about Margaret Van Horn Dwight's wagon journey in 1810 from New Haven, Connecticut, to Warren, Ohio, where she would find a husband, bear thirteen children, and die in middle-age.

In 1899 a chartered yacht, the Casco, brought to Honolulu Robert Louis Stevenson and his family. The writer was then already at the height of his popularity in Europe and the United States. He spent the next six months and another, shorter period in 1893 in the Hawaiian Islands, participating in the life of the "royal crowd" and enjoying the best health of a lifetime plagued with illness. Travels in Hawaii brings together many of the diverse works from a romantic interlude in the career of this famous writer.

Volume 1 of great explorer's classic account of explorations of lakes of Central Africa, perilous journey down unexplored Congo River. Incredible hardships, perseverance. Total in set: 149 illustrations. Map.

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.

'A book more interesting in its subject, or more satisfactory in its execution, is seldom issued from the press. The country of which it treats, and the circumstances under which it was produced, equal each other in singularity.' So writes the translator of this work, first published in English in 1802, and here republished in facsimile, complete with maps and original engravings, in two volumes. Baron Dominique Vivant Denon (1747-1825) French illustrator and government official, accompanied Napoleon on his Egyptian campagin in 1798. His journal combines an extraordinary account of military endeavour, with a survey of the country and its people as seen through the eyes of a keen and sensitive observer. The resultant work, enhanced with numerous illustrations by the author, holds a unique place in both European and Arabic historical studies. The author later became director general of French museums, and was the first administrator to organise collections in the Louvre. The republication of his work will be widely welcomed.

A hybrid of history and biography, Maurice Collis's The Land of the Great Image concerns a little-known Portuguese friar abroad in early seventeenth-century Asia. The book chronicles the great diplomatic coup of Friar Manrique's career, opening the kingdom of Arakan, now Burma (land of the "great image" of the Buddha) to the Church and to Portuguese trade, Dispatched from Goa, capital of the now almost forgotten Portuguese empire in Asia, Manrique made his way across and around the Bay of Bengal, surviving shipwreck, tigers, and pirates, to reach the court of King Thiri-thu-dhamma. And all along Manrique's way the author waits at every turn with another curiosity, another historical tidbit for the reader to relish. Collis notes how trials of the Inquisition were run (which too had set up shop in Goa); the luxury enjoyed by Europeans in the East; what was served for dinner at court; how elephant warfare was waged; and what went into a potion magically brewed to bring glory to King Thiri-thu-dhamina (the hearts of 2,000 white doves, 4,000 white cows, and 6,000 of his subjects).

'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

An anthology of 17th and 18th century travel writing that inspired the hugely popular Aubrey/Maturin series, collected and introduced by Patrick O'Brian, beautifully repackaged to mark the centenary of his birth. Patrick O'Brian has unearthed from obscurity the most dynamic travel writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth century. With his scholarly mind, editor's eye, and traveller's heart he brings together a series of thrilling seaward tales. Expertly chosen by O'Brian and prefaced with details that bring these extracts to vivid life, A Book of Voyages is a broad yet intimate portrait of what life was like at sea during a time of discovery. This rare collection sheds a glorious light onto these accounts of seaward adventure. From why eating rats is necessary and how to powder your hair in France to how to truly face fear and distress during a terrifying sea passage, this collection is rich in travellers' experiences. A Book of Voyages is a unique opportunity to not only accompany an adored nautical author as he digs up one gripping historical treasure after another, but to understand how he was inspired to write the Aubrey Maturin series for which he is so famous.

M. Edith Durham is best known for her classic travel books about the Balkans. However, she was also a passionate, articulate and well-informed commentator on the twists and turns of Balkan politics and the machinations of the Great Powers. The pieces in this collection of her writings from the early half of the twentieth century remind us of the many connections between Britain and the Balkans over recent centuries -- of Tennyson, Disraeli, Lord Fitzmaurice, Aubrey Herbert and Margaret Hasluck. With its wide geographical sweep, the book offers a fair picture of the Balkans in the early twentieth century: Montenegro, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia are all represented -- their dangers and wonders, ugly brutality and startling beauty, history, custom, geography and politics. The anthology offers vivid pictures of Balkan locations which will be fascinating reading for anyone interested in modern Balkan history.

Johnson's 'Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland' is not only a narrative of personal experience, rare in the canon of his writings, but also a deeply reflective survey of the Highlands and Isles--their social and economic structure, their traditions and customs. Beyond this, Johnson undertakes a subtle, penetrating analysis of a people in the throes of change, and examines the predicament they face as a result.

When she couldn't find hiking boots that fit, Laura White Brunner explored Yosemite backcountry barefoot, and at times alone, in an era when grizzly bears still roamed the park. When told she couldn't hike in pants, she pinned up her skirt. Brunner showed admirable pluck, but, more remarkably, she did it as a teenager in the 1910s-and she wrote it all down. Her memoir, recovered from the Yosemite archives and published here for the first time, recounts two summers spent working and hiking in Yosemite Valley during a time of great change-in the park and in the world beyond. In captivating prose Brunner describes her unlikely adventures in the summers of 1915 and 1917, as well as what she calls "the interlude" between them. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, always engaging, her account captures the "trails" and tribulations of a young woman coming of age in America's most beautiful national park. Lightly edited and put into biographical, geographical, and historical context by Jared N. Champion, the book is also illustrated with historic photographs, many taken by Brunner herself. It provides an indelible picture of a bygone time, of awakening young womanhood in a pristine natural world just opening to tourism on a grand scale. Late in life, Laura White Brunner (1899-1973) told a reporter that she had always wanted to be a national park ranger, but, sadly, was "born too soon." Nonetheless she made Yosemite her own-in her hiking, photographs, and memoir, but also in a practical sense, when her ascent of Half Dome by the "Clothes-Line Rope" inspired the park administration, who feared more women might summit the monolith, to install the iconic "Cables on Half Dome" route that remains in place today. Brunner went on to a career in journalism and though she tried for decades to publish her memoir, this is its first appearance in print.

Born in 1831, Isabella, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes in 1872 'in search of health' and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode on her spirited horse Birdie through the American 'Wild West', a terrain only recently opened to pioneer settlement. Here she met Rocky Mountain Jim, her 'dear (one-eyed) desperado', fond of poetry and whisky - 'a man any women might love, but no sane woman would marry'. He helped her climb the 'American Matterhorn' and round up cattle on horseback. The wonderful letters which make up this volume were first published in 1879 and were enormously popular in Isabella Bird's lifetime. They tell of magnificent unspoilt landscapes and abundant wildlife, of small remote townships, of her encounters with rattlesnakes, wolves, pumas and grizzly bears and her reactions to the volatile passions of the miners and pioneer settlers.

In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas. Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, 'If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then Aran, as an island off the west of Ireland, is still more so; it is Ireland raised to the power of two.' Towards the end of the last century Irish nationalists came to identify the area as the country's uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture and spiritual values. It was for these reasons that Yeats suggested Synge visit the islands to record their way of life. The result is a passionate exploration of a triangle of contradictory relationships - between an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism, a physical environment of ascetic loveliness and savagely unpredictable moods, and Synge himself, formed by modern European thought but in love with the primitive.

The critical and biographical introduction tells of Lady Wortley Montagu's travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716, where her husband had been appointed Ambassador. Her lively letters offer insights into the paradoxical freedoms conferred on Muslim women by the veil, the value of experimental work by Turkish doctors on inoculation, and the beauty of Arab poetry and culture.

'New York is an aquarium ... where there are nothing but hellbenders and lungfish and slimy, snag-toothed groupers and sharks' In 1935 Henry Miller set off from his adopted home, Paris, to revisit his native land, America. Aller Retour New York, his exuberant, humorous missive to his friend Alfred Perles describing the trip and his return journey on a Dutch steamer, is filled with vivid reflections on his hellraising antics, showing Miller at the height of his powers. This edition also includes Via Dieppe-Newhaven, his entertaining account of a failed attempt to visit England. 'The greatest American writer' Bob Dylan

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries ushered in a new era of discovery as explorers traversed the globe, returning home with vivid tales of distant lands and exotic peoples. Aided by the invention of the printing press in Europe, travelers were able to spread their accounts to wider audiences than ever before. In Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery, historian Peter C. Mancall has compiled some of the most important travel accounts of this era. Written by authors from Spain, France, Italy, England, China, and North Africa describing locations that range from Brazil to Canada, China to Virginia, and Angola to Vietnam, these accounts provided crucial insight into unfamiliar cultures and environments, and also betrayed the prejudices of their own societies, revealing as much about the observers themselves as they did about faraway lands.
From Christopher Columbus to lesser-known figures such as the Huguenot missionary Jean de Lery, this anthology brings together first-hand accounts of places connected by the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. Unlike other collections, Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery offers a global view of travel at a crucial stage in world, and human, history, with accounts written by non-European authors, including two new translations. Included here are the Mughal Emperor Babur's first thoughts of India upon establishing his empire there, the Chinese chronicler Ma Huan's report detailing Chinese travel to the Middle East during the fifteenth century, and an account of Africa written by the man known as Leo Africanus. In addition to these travel narratives, this anthology features rare pictures from sixteenth-century printed books, includingimages of Brazil, Roanoke, Guiana, and India, which, together with the accounts themselves, provide a detailed understanding of the many ways in which fifteenth and sixteenth century travelers and readers imagined other worlds.

Ernest Shackleton sailed to the South Pole as the First World War broke out in Europe, intent on making the first ever trans-Antarctic crossing. South! is Shackleton's first-hand account of the epic expedition, which he described as 'the last great journey on earth'. During the journey their ship, the Endurance, became trapped by ice and was crushed, forcing the men to survive in and escape from one of the world's most hostile environments. With no hope of rescue, Shackleton and four others set sail in a small open boat on a 600-mile crossing to South Georgia. Shipwrecked on the uninhabited side of the island, they were forced into making the first ever winter crossing of the island, all the time threatened by brutal cold and hunger. South! made Shackleton's name as an explorer. The dramatic story, one of the most astonishing feats of Polar escapology, remains as enthralling now as when it was first published in 1919. Stanfords Travel Classics feature some of the finest historical travel writing in the English language, with authors hailing from both sides of the Atlantic. Every title has been reset in a contemporary typeface to create a series that every lover of fine travel literature will want to collect and keep.

Published in 1851, this is the first book written by the famed Victorian explorer Richard F. Burton. It is an account of his journey through portions of southwest India while he was on sick leave from the British Indian army. Traveling through Bombay to the Portuguese colony of Goa, he went through Calicut and other cities on the Malabar coast, ending up in the Nilgiri mountains at the hill station of Ootacamund. The observant traveler, not the intrepid adventurer, is the narrator of the account, and its intended audience was the voracious Victorian consumer of travel literature. Coupled with a critical introduction by Dane Kennedy, this facsimile edition provides a revealing look at the people who inhabited a part of India that was generally off the beaten track in the nineteenth century. The Portuguese and Mestizo inhabitants of Goa, the Todas of Ootacamund, as well as the fellow Britons Burton meets on his journey are all subject to his penetrating scrutiny. Burton's clever, ascerbic, and unorthodox personality together with his irreverence for convention and his bemused disdain for humanity come through clearly in these pages, as does his extraordinary command of the languages and literatures of various people. 'What a glad moment it is, to be sure, when the sick and seedy, the tired and testy invalid from pestiferous Scinde or pestilential Guzerat, 'leaves all behind him' and scrambles over the sides of his Pattimar'. 'His what?' 'Ah! we forget. The gondola and barque are household words in your English ears, the budgerow is beginning to own an old familiar sound, but you are right - the 'Pattimar' requires a definition'.

A reissue of a truly classic title on the Batsford backlist. First published in 1935, it is a wonderful snapshot of our capital before the Second World War, and a charming insight into our attitudes to urban life back in the Thirties. Our posh guide Cohen-Portheim offers us his interpretation of life in London through her people, her buildings and her history.The chapters include:Towns withinTown Streets and their LifeGreen LondonLondon and the ArtsLondon Amusements and Night LifeHotels and RestaurantsTraditional LondonLondon and the BritishLondon and the Foreigner (surprisingly liberal!)It includes the iconic Brian Cook cover illustration of Ludgate Circus and St Pauls, and should be sought after for that alone. Add in the charm of the authentic voice of a 1930s Londoner, it should be enjoyed by all Londoners.

The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in nineteenth-century fiction. In these stories, as in his work generally, Stevenson shows himself to be a virtuoso of narrative styles: his Pacific fiction includes the domestic realism of `The Beach at Falese, the folktale plots of `The Bottle Imp' and `The Isle of Voices', and the modernist blending of naturalism and symbolism in The Ebb-Tide. But beyond their generic diversity the stories are linked by their concern with representing the multiracial society of which their author had become a member. In this collection - the first to bring together all his shorter Pacific fiction in one volume - Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross- cultural encounters of nineteenth-century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world. 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.

An adventure story from the wilds of early America, "The Land between the Rivers" recreates the journeys of the English botanist Thomas Nuttall, one of American history's most well-traveled scientists.
During the early nineteenth century, Nuttall explored the waters, valleys, plains, and mountains of the Great Lakes, Ohio River, Mississippi River, as well as the Missouri, Arkansas, Red, and Canadian river valleys of the former Louisiana Territory.
In this fascinating account of Nuttall's travels through the wilderness of the middle west, author Russell Lawson-using Nuttall's own journal-captures the sense of excitement of the early wanderer. As much a delight for the mind as the senses, The Land between the Rivers details the unremitting weather and rugged geography of uncharted lands within the Louisiana Territory. A sense of discovery pervades the narrative as Nuttall's odyssey builds to its climax in the prairie wilderness of what is now Oklahoma. Sickened by "ague"-in his case, malaria-Nuttall at times was barely able to go on; yet he continued to search for and catalog plants and animals.
"The Land between the Rivers" expands our knowledge of the work of one of the country's earliest botanists. We also learn a great deal about the early explorers, the inhabitants of the unsettled land, and about the land and culture of the times.

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 set of the celebrated Nebraska edition features the seven core volumes--those written by Lewis and Clark--and incorporates a wide range of new scholarship dealing with all aspects of the expedition, including geography, Indian languages, plants, and animals, in order to recreate the expedition within its historical context.

The name of John Muir has come to stand for the protection of wild land and wilderness in both America and Britain. Born in Dunbar in the east of Scotland in 1838, Muir is famed as the father of American conservation, and as the first person to promote the idea of National Parks. Combining acute observation with a sense of inner discovery, Muir's writings of his travels through some of the greatest landscapes on Earth, including the Carolinas, Florida, Alaska and those lands which were to become the great National Parks of Yosemite and the Sierra Valley, raise an awareness of nature to a spiritual dimension. These journals provide a unique marriage of scientific survey of natural history with lyrical and often amusing anecdotes, retaining a freshness, intensity and brutal honesty which will amaze the modern reader. This collection, including the never-before-published Stickeen, presents the finest of Muir's writings, and imparts a rounded portrait of a man whose generosity, passion, discipline and vision are an inspiration to this day.