Set in 1867, The Innocents Abroad is a travel book that follows a group of Americans from New York City to the renowned Holy Land. Throughout the journey, author Mark Twain uses humor and wit to make astute observations about the diverse people and legendary locales. Described as the "Great Pleasure Excursion," Twain and his traveling companions visit some of the most illustrious cities in the world. They make stops in Italy, France, and Greece as well as modern-day Israel and Ukraine. With each trip, the author notes the contrast between expectation and reality. He critiques the misrepresentation of cultural sites and events with notable irony and disillusion. The retelling of a worldly expedition through an American lens made >The Innocents Abroad a massive commercial success. It's one Twain's best-selling books and became a staple within the travel genre. Readers will thoroughly enjoy the author's enlightening take on the Old World and public perception. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Innocents Abroad is both modern and readable.

The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic Mission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. In this colorful documentary from the tenth century, the enigmatic Ibn Fadlan relates his experiences as part of an embassy sent by Caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, body painting, and a striking account of a ship funeral. Together, these anecdotes illuminate a vibrant world of diversity during the heyday of the Abbasid Empire, narrated with as much curiosity and zeal as they were perceived by its observant beholder. An English-only edition.

Isaac Titsingh was intermittently head of the Japan factory (trading station) of the Dutch East India Company 1780-94. He was a career merchant, but unusual in having a classical education and training as a physician. His impact in Japan was enormous, but he left disappointed in the ability of the country to embrace change. After many years in Java, India and China, he came to London, and then settled in Paris where he devoted himself to compiling translations of prime Japanese texts. It is one of the most exciting anthologies of the period and reveals the almost unknown world of eighteenth-century Japan, discussing politics, history, poetry and rituals. The Illustrations of Japan appeared posthumously in 1821-1822 in English, French and Dutch. This fully annotated edition makes the original English version available for the first time in nearly two centuries

Joseph J. Dimock's descriptions of Cuba in his travel diary provide a remarkable firsthand view of a fascinating period in the island's history. In the mid-nineteenth century, the United States was pursuing manifest destiny. The war with Mexico had resulted in a vast increase of national territory, and many north Americans wanted Cuba as the next acquisition. In addition to annexationist plots, Cuban life was marked by slave conspiracies, colonial insurrections, economic expansion, and political intrigue. Impressions of Cuba in the Nineteenth Century describes the social, economic and political conditions in the 1850s. Dimock's entries of his travels and observations as an American reveal details of Cuban agriculture, plant life, and natural resources. The diary also provides elaborate accounts of the sugar industry, extensive commentary on the daily live of slaves, Spaniards, and Cubans. Dimock's curiosity led him around the island, into prisons, salons, and other unusual places, resulting in a wide-ranging account of Cuban life. Impressions of Cuba in the Nineteenth Century provides a highly accessible, entertaining, and insightful look at Cuba.

"Off at last! Farewell comfort, ease, good food, snug beds! Welcome hard riding, rain and cold, scanty diet and the ground for a couch!" So begins Sabine Baring-Gould's account of his journey on horseback around Iceland in 1862. Aged twenty-eight, the young writer and teacher was fascinated by the tradition of the Icelandic sagas, and this was the catalyst for his adventure and the book that emerged from it. His voyage took him from the then tiny settlement of Reykjavik through remote and hostile terrain, passing through the empty expanse of Iceland's countryside. He observed mountains and glaciers, volcanoes and geysers, wondering at the wild beauty of the landscape. He also recorded the rich flora and fauna that he saw--and, to his chagrin, that his companions shot. But Baring-Gould's account is more than a travelogue. Throughout he recreates and interprets Icelandic sagas, bringing to life the extraordinary characters and events of these age-old stories. Evoking a world of trolls, witches and magic, he explores the mythology and language of Icelandic lore. He also turns a critical eye on his fellow travellers and the Icelanders he meets, passing judgment on food such as stuffed puffin, pungent fish and ptarmigan. By turns amusing and acerbic, Baring-Gould provides a detailed and colourful account of an Icelandic society that has long since disappeared. Illustrated with Baring-Gould's own drawings, Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas is an entertaining and eccentric insight into a world of myth and legend as well as a classic of natural and human observation.

A remarkable account by a pioneering woman explorer who was described by Rudyard Kipling as 'the bravest woman of all my knowledge'. Until 1893, Mary Kingsley lived the typical life of a single Victorian woman, tending to sick relatives and keeping house for her brother. However, on the death of her parents, she undertook an extraordinary decision: with no prior knowledge of the region, she set out alone to West Africa to pursue her anthropological interests and collect botanical specimens. Her subsequent book, published in 1897, is a testament to understatement and humour - few explorers made less of the hardships and dangers experienced while travelling (including unaccompanied treks through dangerous jungles and encounters with deadly animals). Travels in West Africa would challenge (as well as reinforce) contemporary Victorian prejudices about Africa, and also made invaluable contributions to the fields of botany and anthropology. Above all, however, it has stood the test of time as a gripping, classic travel narrative by a woman whose sense of adventure and fascination with Africa transformed her whole life. This Penguin edition includes a fascinating introduction by Dr Toby Green examining Victorian attitudes to Africa, along with explanatory notes by Lynnette Turner. Mary Kingsley was born in north London in 1862, the daughter of the traveller and physician George Kingsley and his former housekeeper, Mary Bailey. Her education was scant: while her younger brother was sent away to school, she stayed at home. Later she lived in Cambridge, and cared for her bedridden mother. Following the deaths of her parents, Kingsley embarked on a voyage to West Africa in August 1893, with the object of studying native religion and law and collecting zoological specimens. In December 1894, she undertook a second trip to the region, during which she became the first woman to climb West Africa's highest mountain, Mount Cameroon. On returning home eleven months later, she wrote Travels in West Africa, which was published in 1897 and was followed by West African Studies in 1899. Kingsley made one final trip to Africa, enlisting as a volunteer nurse in South Africa during the Boer War. She had only been there for two months when she developed typhoid fever and died, on 3rd June 1900, before being buried at sea in accordance with her wishes. Lynnette Turner is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Edge Hill University. Toby Green is Lecturer in Lusophone African History and Culture at Kings College London. His book The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa appeared in 2011.

The 'memsahibs' of the British Raj in India are well-known figures today, frequently depicted in fiction, TV, and film. In recent years, they have also become the focus of extensive scholarship. Less familiar to both academics and the general public, however, are the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century precursors to the memsahibs of the Victorian and Edwardian era. Yet British women also visited and resided in India in this earlier period, witnessing first-hand the tumultuous, expansionist decades in which the East India Company established British control over the subcontinent. Some of these travellers produced highly regarded accounts of their experiences, thereby inaugurating a rich tradition of women's travel writing about India. In the process, they not only reported events and developments in the subcontinent; they also contributed to them, helping to shape opinion and policy on issues such as colonial rule, religion, and social reform. This new set in the Chawton House Library Women's Travel Writing series assembles seven of these accounts, six by British authors (Jemima Kindersley, Maria Graham, Eliza Fay, Ann Deane, Julia Maitland and Mary Sherwood) and one by an American (Harriet Newell). Their narratives - here reproduced for the first time in reset scholarly editions - were published between 1777 and 1854, and recount journeys undertaken in India, or periods of residence there, between the 1760s and the 1830s. Collectively they showcase the range of women's interests and activities in India, and also the variety of narrative forms, voices and personae available to them as travel writers. Some stand squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment ethnography; others show the growing influence of Evangelical beliefs. But all disrupt any lingering stereotypes about women's passivity, reticence, and lack of public agency in this period, when colonial women were not yet as sequestered and debarred from cross-cultural contact as they would later be during the Raj. Their narratives are consequently a useful resource to students and researchers across multiple fields and disciplines, including women's writing, travel writing, colonial and postcolonial studies, the history of women's educational and missionary work, and Romantic-era and nineteenth-century literature.

Isaac Titsingh was head of the Japanese station of the Dutch East India Company 1780-94. He was a career merchant, but unusual in having a classical education and training as a physician. He could also read Chinese. In Japan, his impact was enormous. He became a friend and confidant of the shogun's father-in-law, the famously wise but wily Shimazu Shigehide, almost causing war between father and son-in-law. He also attempted the project of equipping Japan with an ocean-going fleet. However, he left Japan disappointed in the ability of the country to embrace change. After many years in India he settled in Paris, where he wrote down his experiences. It is one of the most exciting journals of the period and reveals the almost unknown world of eighteenth-century Japan, discussing politics, history, poetry and rituals. The Illustrations of Japan appeared posthumously in 1822 in English and French. This fully annotated edition makes the original English version available for the first time in 180 years.

This is a narrative of travels in Japan undertaken in 1878 by someone who is probably the most famous female traveller and writer of the Victorian era. Travelling alone as a woman, she was the first to enter parts of Japan which had had no cultural contact whatsoever with a European, let alone a woman on her own. The letters which make up this work give a real picture of Japan and Japanese life at the time.

This is the story of Stevenson's Pacific travels on the Casco and the Equator. It is a beautifully observed account of island peoples and their life; it is also the story of the beginning of his love affair with the Pacific, and of his growing commitment to the island cause. "In the South Seas" has been described as "the most solid of Stevenson's general writings;" it is certainly his least known book as well as a unique gem of Pacific literature, and richly deserves to be rediscovered.

'Matar has produced a valuable and stimulating piece of scholarship ...' - The Daily Telegraph

Pierre Loti was a member of a diplomatic mission to the Sultan of Morocco at Fez, and in this book he gives us an extraordinarily fascinating account of the journey. The departure of the caravan from Tangier, the encampments, the nightly arrival of the Mouna, the crossing of the Oued-M'Cazen in flood, the fantasies and powder-play of the Arab horsemen, and the magnificent state entry into Fez, are described in a succession of vivid vignettes.

Driven by the promise of prosperity and opportunity on the frontier, thousands of men and women traveled west in the mid-1800s to forge a new life. Accompanying them were their children, wide-eyed and excited about the adventures that awaited them as they headed toward the setting sun. Little did they know how treacherous and grueling the trip would be. The toil and danger of overland travel forced parents to depend on their children to assist in their ultimate survival. Girls were called upon to help cook, set up and break camp, and mind younger siblings. Boys were called upon to help drive the wagons, herd the oxen and horses, assist with wagon repairs, and guard the camp at night. Even with their endless chores, many pioneer boys and girls found time to record the details of their journeys in letters and diaries. This collection of short episodes from the lives of these children on the trail offers fresh perspectives on the experience.

This incredible journey began in 1887 and took King Kalakoua to the Unites States of America, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Siam, Singapore, Malaya, India, Egypt, Rome, London, Belgium, Vienna, Spain, Portugal, France, and back to Hawaii through the United States again. A unique and insightful glimpse into these states and elites at the end of the nineteenth century full of fascinating events, encounters, and stories.

"The text describes the discovery of a very remarkable variant of the reported spoken work of Jesus Christ, which will be of interest to all Christians and scholars. To this day I recall my reaction upon first reading the concluding chapter of In the Shadow of Sinai', with its discussion of a remarkable variant of the reported spoken word of Jesus Christ. Brought up with a start, I read the marked passage again and quickly went to the Bible. Sure enough, the reading Matthew xii. 36 was different. But why? Surely those in charge of biblical exegesis would have known of the publication of the Gibson sister's text. And so began a small personal odyssey to bring to light, once again, this remarkable finding." -- Anthony Grahame, From the Foreword.

Martineau's classic American travel narrative has long been unavailable. This new abridgment of the original 1838 edition offers an unsurpassed firsthand view of Jacksonian America. Here are Martineau's penetrating condemnation of slavery and her championship of abolition and women's rights; her incisive portraits of Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Garrison, Emerson, and the Beechers; her critical observations of American schools, asylums, colleges, and prisons; and more. Historian Daniel Feller, author of The Jacksonian Promise, introduces the narrative, identifies the major characters, and provides an index for easy use.

Martineau's classic American travel narrative has long been unavailable. This new abridgment of the original 1838 edition offers an unsurpassed firsthand view of Jacksonian America. Here are Martineau's penetrating condemnation of slavery and her championship of abolition and women's rights; her incisive portraits of Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Garrison, Emerson, and the Beechers; her critical observations of American schools, asylums, colleges, and prisons; and more. Historian Daniel Feller, author of The Jacksonian Promise, introduces the narrative, identifies the major characters, and provides an index for easy use.

Writes of Passage explores the interplay between a system of "othering" which travelers bring to a place, and the "real" geographical difference they discover upon arrival. Exposing the tensions between the imaginary and real, Duncan and Gregory and a team of leading internationa contributors focus primarily upon travelers from the 18th and 19th Centuries to pin down the imaginary within the context of imperial power. The contributors focus on travel to three main regions: Africa, South Asia, and Europe - wit the European examples being drawn from Britain, France and Greece.

Edward Said's oft cited claim that Orientalists past and present have spun imaginary geographies where they sought ground truth, has launched a plethora of studies of fictive geographies. Representations often reveal more about the culture of the writer than that of the people and places written about. Yet the study of imaginary geographies has raised many questions about Western writers' abilities to provide representations of foreign places; there is now much interest in Western mis-representations of places (imaginary geographies). This text explores the interplay between a system of "othering" which travellers bring to a place, and the "real" geographical difference they discover upon arrival. Exposing the tensions between the imaginary and real, James Duncan and Derek Gregory and a team of international contributors focus primarily upon travellers from the 18th and 19th centuries to pin down the imaginary within the context of imperial power. The contributors focus on travel to three main regions: Africa, South Asia, and Europe - with the European examples being drawn from Britain, France and Greece. This book presents a unique contribution from geographers - with their sensit

Long popular with a general readership, travel writing has, in the past three decades or so, become firmly established as an object of serious and multi-disciplinary academic inquiry. Few of the scholarly and popular publications that have focused on the nineteenth century have regarded the century as a whole. This broad volume examines the cultural and social aspects of travel writing on Africa, Asia, America, the Balkans and Australasia. An additional key feature of the volume will be its inclusion of different types of traveller. Several types of travellers and travel texts are considered in the collection. The volume includes studies of explorers, missionaries, artists and writers, Romantics and socialists, colonialists and indigenes. It covers, therefore, a range of travels, travellers, and travellers' texts, and aims to establish some of the contexts in which travel took place. This volume is as much about departure points as it is about destinations, revealing the prejudices and precepts of the nineteenth-century traveller.

This title was first published in 2001: Hundreds of European travelogues produced by British travellers between 1750 and 1800 remain out of sight in most libraries and have generally been out of print since the 18th century. While many people with a working knowledge of the 18th century are familiar with works including Sterne's "A Sentimental Journey" and Smollett's "Travels through France and Italy", those produced by less "literary" travellers are largely unknown. This study aims to recreate the world of 18th-century travel writing in order to illuminate its central role in shaping Britain's emerging sense of national identity - an identity which proves to be more complex an less homogeneous than some cultural and historical studies would suggest. The author finds that the developing discourse of national character is bound up with questions of gender: national and authorial virtue are projected in terms of appropriately gendered behaviour, for male and female travel writers alike. In turn, gender intersects with class, most obviously in the tendency to denigrate aristocratic travellers as effeminate and celebrate the more manly activities of the middle-class traveller. These then - national identity, authorship and gender - are the central preoccupations of the study

This anthology aims to challenge stereotypes of women travellers. Rather than simply presenting writings by Victorian women who travelled bravely around the world disregarding social convention and danger, the editors present a range of writing and possible ways of being a woman traveller. As well as the 'eccentric' woman traveller, the editors have included writings by those who might be seen as failed travellers, cautious and conventional travellers and those who did not conform to the adventurous heroine stereotype. Because travelling as a woman and writing as a woman presents the author with a number of textual problems which must be negotiated, Foster and Mills have chosen to include writings which confronted these problems and which resolved them (or did not resolve them) in different ways. These textual problems include the depiction of other women, the representation of spatial relations, the negotiations undertaken in relation to the adventure heroine narrative and character and the position taken by the author in relation to the representation of knowledge. These issues are all crucial in relation to travel writing by women , and the women, whose writing has been collected together in this anthology have made bold decisions in relation to them. -- .

Indian Travel Writing is a new five-volume collection co-published by Routledge and Edition Synapse. Hitherto, the paucity of readily available travel writing produced by imperial subjects themselves has long been apparent, and this anthology addresses that lack. A veritable treasure-trove, it brings together scarce documents which are currently widely dispersed or very difficult for scholars, researchers, and students across the globe to locate and use. The collection confirms the deeply cosmopolitan sensibility possessed by many Indian travellers, and their narratives provide insightful contemporary critiques of the British Empire and of Euro-American culture more generally. The gathered works often exhibit considerable expertise in local cuisine, politics, and poetry, as well as a keen interest in political theory, human rights, and class conflict. Beyond Britain, continental Europe, and the USA, the collection also includes writing by Indians who travelled to Russia, China, the Far East, Australia, and Africa. Indian Travel Writing draws on the narratives of a diverse range of writers, including Indian princes, statesmen, lawyers, reformers, sportsmen, artists and curators, politicians, and merchants. Each piece is reproduced in facsimile, giving users a strong sense of immediacy to the texts and permitting citation to the original pagination. The collection will be particularly welcomed by historians and those working in colonial-discourse studies. It will also be of interest to anthropologists and literary scholars. Each volume is supplemented by a substantial introduction, newly written by the editor, Pramod K. Nayar. The collection also includes a detailed appendix providing data on the provenance of the gathered materials. *********************** Pramod K. Nayar is also the editor of the five-volume Women in Colonial India (2013) (978-0-415-52555-8), another Routledge and Edition Synapse co-publication.