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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
This enthralling story of survival is the first major narrative of
the exploration of North America by Europeans (1528-36). The author
of "Castaways" ("Naufragios"), Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, was a
fortune-seeking nobleman and the treasurer of an expedition to
claim for Spain a vast area that includes today's Florida,
Louisiana, and Texas. A shipwreck forced him and a handful of men
to make the long westward journey on foot to meet up with Hernan
Cortes.
When the famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss arrived in Rio de Janeiro, he had one book in his pocket: Jean de Lery's "History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil." Lery had undertaken his fascinating and arduous voyage in 1556, as a youthful member of the first Protestant mission to the New World. Janet Whatley presents the first complete English translation of one of the most vivid early European accounts of life in the New World.
Consequent upon the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), the
Africanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland launched the Niger-Benue
expedition to investigate possible riverine communications
throughout the Niger-Benue river system. Responsibility for the
expedition ultimately fell to Paul Staudinger, a young entomologist
with no experience of inner Africa.
This definitive edition of Columbus's account of the voyage presents the most accurate printed version of his journal available to date. Unfortunately both Columbus's original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage-part quotation, part summary of the complete copy-is a transcription made by Bartolome de las Casas in the 1530s. This new edition of the Las Casas manuscript presents its entire contents-including notes, insertions, and canceled text-more accurately, completely, and graphically than any other Spanish text published so far. In addition, the new translation, which strives for readability and accuracy, appears on pages facing the Spanish, encouraging on-the- spot comparisons of the translation with the original. Study of the work is further facilitated by extensive notes, documenting differences between the editors' transcription and translation and those of other transcribers and translators and summarizing current research and debates on unanswered current research and debates on unanswered questions concerning the voyage. In addition to being the only edition in which Spanish and English are presented side by side, this edition includes the only concordance ever prepared for the Diario. Awaited by scholars, this new edition will help reduce the guesswork that has long plagued the study of Columbus's voyage. It may shed light on a number of issues related to Columbus's navigational methods and the identity of his landing places, issues whose resolution depend, at least in part, on an accurate transcription of the Diario. Containing day-by-day accounts of the voyage and the first sighting of land, of the first encounters with the native populations and the first appraisals of his islands explored, and of a suspenseful return voyage to Spain, the Diario provides a fascinating and useful account to historians, geographers, anthropologists, sailors, students, and anyone else interested in the discovery-or in a very good sea story. Oliver Dunn received the PH.D. degree from Cornell University. He is Professor Emeritus in Purdue University and a longtime student of Spanish and early history of Spanish America. James E. Kelley, Jr., received the M.A. degree from American University. A mathematician and computer and management consultant by vocation, for the past twenty years he has studied the history of European cartography and navigation in late-medieval times. Both are members of the Society for the History of Discoveries and have written extensively on the history of navigation and on Columbus's first voyage, Although they remain unconvinced of its conclusions, both were consultants to the National geographic Society's 1986 effort to establish Samana Cay as the site of Columbus's first landing.
Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli- Nu'ma-ni- (1857-1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh, Nu'ma-ni- took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts to use as sources for a series of biographies on major figures in Islamic history. Along the way, he collected information on schools, curricula, publishers, and newspapers, presenting a unique portrait of imperial culture at a transformative moment in the history of the Middle East. Nu'ma-ni- records sketches and anecdotes that offer rare glimpses of intellectual networks, religious festivals, visual and literary culture, and everyday life in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. First published in 1894, the travelogue has since become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has been immensely influential in the intellectual and politicalhistory of South Asia. This translation, the first into English, includes contemporary reviews of the travelogue, letters written by the author during his travels, and serialized newspaper reports about the journey, and is deeply enriched for readers and students by the translator's copious multilingual glosses and annotations. Nu'ma-ni- 's chronicle offers unique insight into broader processes of historical change in this part of the world while also providing a rare glimpse of intellectual engagement and exchange across the porous borders of empire.
Maugham spent the winter months of 1919-20 travelling 1500 miles up the Yangtze river. Always more interested in people than places he gave full rein to a sensitive and philosophical nature: ON A CHINESE SCREEN is the refined accumulation of the countless scraps of paper on which he had taken notes. A series of acute and finely crafted sketches of Westerners who are culturally out of their depth in the immensity of the Chinese civilisation. Within the narrow confines of their colonial milieu, missionaries, consuls, army officers and company managers are all gently ridiculed as they persist obliviously with the life they know
The violence, wonder, and nostalgia of voyaging are nowhere more
vivid than in the literature of South Seas exploration. "Preserving
the Self in the South Seas" charts the sensibilities of the lonely
figures that encountered the new and exotic in terra incognita.
Jonathan Lamb introduces us to the writings of South Seas
explorers, and finds in them unexpected and poignant tales of
selves alarmed and transformed.
A classic travelogue that brilliantly conjures 1930s Britain. In this series of pen-portraits of England from the 1930s, Victor Canning 'evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life' (The Bookseller), from Cumbria to Cornwall. Canning's heart-warming and humorous observations of sleepy villages, pastoral scenes and busy industries are a delightful time capsule into life in England during the interwar years. 'What does the word England mean to you? To all of us England means something different, and yet I think there is for every man and woman some little corner which is more England than anywhere else...' ***PRAISE FOR EVERYMAN'S ENGLAND*** 'Wonderful... elegant, humorous, exuberant essays.' Guardian 'Evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life.' The Bookseller 'Canning finds beauty everywhere, but never sentimentalises, and is consistently honest enough to highlight poverty and social inequality... Canning, at his very best when waxing lyrical about landscapes, offers vivid images of the English countryside...' The Daily Mail
A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. "You have a good horse," he then said; "it eats nothing." -from An Italian Pilgrimage The 1880s was an exhilarating time for cycling pioneers like Elizabeth and her husband Joseph. As boneshakers and high-wheelers evolved into tandem tricycles and the safety bike, cycling grew from child's play and extreme sport into a leisurely and, importantly, literary mode of transportation. The illustrated travel memoirs of "those Pennells" were-and still are-highly entertaining. They helped usher in the new age of leisure touring, while playfully hearkening back to famous literary journeys. In this new edition, Dave Buchanan provides rich cultural contexts surrounding the Pennells' first two adventures. These long out-of-print travel memoirs will delight avid cyclists as well as scholars of travel literature, cycling history, women's writing, Victorian literature, and illustration.
The Marquis de Custine's unique perspective on a vast, fascinating country in the grip of oppressive tyranny In 1839, encouraged by his friend Balzac, Custine set out to explore Russia. His impressions turned into what is perhaps the greatest and most influential of all books about Russia under the Tsars. Rich in anecdotes as much about the court of Tsar Nicholas as the streets of St Petersburg, Custine is as brilliant writing about the Kremlin as he is about the great northern landscapes. An immediate bestseller on publication, Custine's book is also a central book for any discussion of 19th century history, as - like de Tocqueville's Democracy in America - it dramatizes far broader questions about the nature of government and society.
Polar explorer John Ross (1777 1856) sailed with William Edward Parry in 1818 to seek a North-West Passage from Baffin Bay. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Ross was widely blamed for its failure. In 1829 he set out on a privately funded expedition on the steamship Victory, accompanied by his nephew James Clark Ross, to try again, returning to England in late 1833. Using survival techniques learnt from the Inuit he befriended, Ross kept his crew healthy through four icebound winters. While the voyage once again failed to find a North-West Passage, it surveyed the Boothia Peninsula and a large part of King William Land. It was also valuable for its scientific findings. Ross published this two-volume work in 1835. Volume 1 summarises previous Polar exploration before describing the voyage; Volume 2 contains scientific reports, information on the Inuit, and a vocabulary of their language.
Chawton House Library: Women's Travel Writings are multi-volume editions with full texts reproduced in facsimile with new scholarly apparatus. The texts have been carefully selected to illustrate various themes in women's history.
Harry Peckham was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, before being called to the Bar and becoming, in time, a King's Counsel, a Commissioner for Bankrupts and Recorder of Chichester. He was also a witty rake, a keen sportsman (he was a member of the committee that drew up the laws of cricket) and a relentless tourist. Harry Peckham's Tour is a collection of letters he wrote in 1769 while travelling through the Netherlands, Belgium and France and contains insights into the society and culture of the places that he visited, including Rotterdam, The Hague, Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent, Paris, Rouen and Calais. Perceptive and funny, Harry Peckham's Tour is written in a very engaging style and is a delight to read. This edition contains a new introduction and notes by Martin Brayne and is the only available version of Peckham's text.
In the spring of 1869, John Muir was looking for means of support to fund his explorations of California’s Central Valley region. A ranch owner offered him a job herding sheep in the Sierra Nevada. As he explored the region, he jotted down his keen observations of the scenic countryside, and he eventually became a guide for some of Yosemite’s most famous visitors, including Ralph Waldo Emerson. Muir documented these experiences in The Yosemite, first published in 1912. It is at once a vivid, accurate description of the land and a passionate homage to nature.
Domenico was the name taken by a rabbi and doctor from Safed in Palestine on his conversion to Catholicism in 1593. For some ten years, he served as Third Physician to Sultan Murad III. In 1611 he wrote, or more accurately he dictated, his Relatione della gran Citta di Constantinopli. This is not just a topographical description of the city, but also an account of its inhabitants and the regulations governing their lives, of how the Sultan spent his time, of the principles and practice of Islam, and much more. English Text.
The classic travel narrative of a Don Quixote-of-the-seas – the first man to circumnavigate the world singlehandedly. Joshua Slocum’s autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable – and entertaining – travel narratives of all time. Setting off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six-foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world’s great circumnavigators – Magellan, Drake, and Cook. But by circling the globe without crew or consorts, Slocum would outdo them all: his three-year solo voyage of more than 46,000 miles remains unmatched in maritime history for its courage, skill, and determination. Sailing Alone around the World recounts Slocum’s wonderful adventures: hair-raising encounters with pirates off Gibraltar and savage Indians in Tierra del Fuego; raging tempests and treacherous coral reefs; flying fish for breakfast in the Pacific; and a hilarious visit with fellow explorer Henry Stanley in South Africa. A century later, Slocum’s incomparable book endures as one of the greatest narratives of adventure ever written.
A Double Mountain Books' classic reissue, this is a story-book travelogue covering the big ranches of West and South Texas. Williams made many informal excursions to study their history, founders and owners, picking up facts, folklore and range gossip along the way. He documents the fifteen largest ranches in Texas and the ways they adapted to changing conditions in the ranching industry. Photographs and maps illustrate the text. Though it never received wide circulation following its publication in 1954, ""The Big Ranch Country"" has been recognized as a standard work by ranch historians. J.W. Williams wrote often in books and newspapers about West Texas, and his work is still cited by authors and scholars. 'The greatest merits of ""The Big Ranch Country"" are its personal, almost conversational style, and the very fact that it is dated. [M]odern-day realities do not impose themselves on this nostalgic work' - Ty Cashion. 'A valuable addition to the collector of Texana and to the mid-century reader who might have wondered just where the large range properties are and how they got that way' - William M. Pearce, ""Southwestern Historical Quarterly"", April 1956.
This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company's army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher's portrayal of Mahomet's sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the first Indian restaurant in England and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a practitioner of 'oriental medicine, i.e., therapeutic massage and herbal steam bath, in London and the seaside resort of Brighton. This is a fascinating account of life in late eighteenth-century India - the first book written in English by an Indian - framed by a mini-biography of a remarkably versatile entrepreneur. "Travels" presents an Indian's view of the British conquest of India and conveys the vital role taken by Indians in the colonial process, especially as they negotiated relations with Britons both in the colonial periphery and the imperial metropole. Connoisseurs of unusual travel narratives, historians of England, Ireland, and British India, as well as literary scholars of autobiography and colonial discourse will find much in this book. But it also offers an engaging biography of a resourceful, multidimensional individual.
Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best known for designing parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, and the grounds of the Capitol in Washington. But before he embarked upon his career as the nation's foremost landscape architect, he was a correspondent for the New York Times , and it was under its auspices that he journeyed through the slave states in the 1850s. His day-by-day observations,including intimate accounts of the daily lives of masters and slaves, the operation of the plantation system, and the pernicious effects of slavery on all classes of society, black and white,were largely collected in The Cotton Kingdom . Published in 1861, just as the Southern states were storming out of the Union, it has been hailed ever since as singularly fair and authentic, an unparalleled account of America's "peculiar institution."
'The charm of certain vacant grassy spaces, in Italy, overfrowned by masses of brickwork that are honeycombed by the suns of centuries, is something that I hereby renounce once for all the attempt to express; but you may be sure that whenever I mention such a spot enchantment lurks in it.' - Henry James In these essays on travels in Italy written from 1872 to 1909, Henry James explores art and religion, political shifts and cultural revolutions, and the nature of travel itself. James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe. John Auchard's lively introduction and extensive notes illuminate the surprising differences between the historical, political, and artistic Italy of James's travels and the metaphoric Italy that became the setting of some of his best-known works of fiction. This edition includes an appendix of James's book reviews on Italian travel-writing.
After living abroad for 20 years, Henry James returned to his native America and travelled down the East Coast from Boston to Florida. This a journal describing his feelings on the rediscovery of the New York of his childhood, and the growth of modern commercial America. He muses on Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson; in Washington, he finds a cityscape devoid of spiritual symbols; in Richmond, thoughts of the civil war haunt him. Published in 1907, this journal also served as a farewell address to the country James would never live in again.
On April 28, 1846, Francis Parkman left Saint Louis on his first expedition west. The Oregon Trail documents his adventures in the wilderness, sheds light on America's westward expansion, and celebrates the American spirit.
In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain’s unofficial sequel to The Innocents Abroad, the author records his hilarious and diverse observations and insights while on a fifteen-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps. “Here you have Twain’s inimitable mix,” writes Dave Eggers in his Introduction, “of the folksy and the effortlessly erudite, his unshakable good sense and his legendary wit, his knack for the easy relation of a perfect anecdote, and some achingly beautiful nature writing.”
In 1934, famed British traveler Freya Stark sailed down the Red Sea, alighting in Aden, located at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. From this backwater outpost, Stark set forth on what was to be her most unforgettable adventure: Following the ancient frankincense routes of the Hadhramaut Valley, the most fertile in Arabia, she sought to be the first Westerner to locate and document the lost city of Shabwa. Chronicling her journey through the towns and encampments of the Hadhramaut, The Southern Gates of Arabia is a tale alive with sheikhs and sultans, tragedy and triumph. Although the claim to discovering Shabwa would not ultimately be Stark's, The Southern Gates of Arabia, a bestseller upon its original publication, remains a classic in the literature of travel. This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Stark's biographer. |
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