This collection includes the first critical editions of both Anne Grant's Letters from the Mountains (1806), one of the Romantic era's most successful non-fictional accounts of the Scottish Highlands, and Elizabeth Isabella Spence's Letters from the North Highlands (1816), a work that, while influenced by Grant's Letters, attempted to move the genre of the Scottish travelogue in new directions. Read together, these volumes offer complementary views of Scottish Highland life at a time of major historical transition: Grant was offering outsiders her perspective as a long-time resident of the region, while Spence was, unapologetically, writing as a tourist. The Highlands were central to Romantic-era debates on subjects ranging from landscape and aesthetics to national identities, and, as this collection demonstrates, women were making significant contributions to those debates. The four volume set, edited by Kirsteen McCue and Pam Perkins, is accompanied by new editorial material including a new general introduction and headnotes to each work.

** Winner of the RSL Christopher Bland Prize ** Uncovering the hidden love triangle between novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the author's grandparents - the critically acclaimed biography with never-before-seen letters detailing the affair. For readers who were swept up in Laura Cumming's On Chapel Sands, Daniel Mendelsohn's An Odyssey and Francesca Wade's Square Haunting. A death in the family delivers Julia Parry a box of letters. Dusty with age, they reveal a secret love affair between the celebrated novelist Elizabeth Bowen and the academic Humphry House - Julia's grandfather. So begins a life-changing quest to understand the affair, which had profound repercussions for Julia's family, not least her grandmother, Madeline. Julia traces these three very different characters through 1930s Oxford and Ireland, Texas, Calcutta in the last days of Empire, and on into World War II. With a supporting cast that includes Isaiah Berlin and Virginia Woolf, The Shadowy Third opens up a world with complex attitudes to love and sex, duty and ambition, and to writing itself.

The Women of Cairo: Scenes of Life in the Orient, first published in 1926, describes the trip to Egypt and other locations in the Ottoman Empire taken by French Romanticist Gerard de Nerval. The book focuses on both reinforcing and dispelling the old ways in which people saw the Orient, as well as examining their old and new customs. This book is perfect for those studying history and travel.

Throughout 1949 and 1950 H.W. 'Bill' Tilman mounted pioneering expeditions to Nepal and its Himalayan mountains, taking advantage of some of the first access to the country for Western travellers in the 20th century. Tilman and his party-including a certain Sherpa Tenzing Norgay-trekked into the Kathmandu Valley and on to the Langtang region, where the highs and lows began. They first explored the Ganesh Himal, before moving on to the Jugal Himal and the following season embarking on an ambitious trip to Annapurna and Everest. Manaslu was their first objective, but left to 'better men', and Annapurna IV very nearly climbed instead but for bad weather which dogged the whole expedition. Needless to say, Tilman was leading some very lightweight expeditions into some seriously heavyweight mountains. After the Annapurna adventure Tilman headed to Everest with-among others-Dr Charles Houston. Approaching from the delights of Namche Bazaar, the party made progress up the flanks of Pumori to gaze as best they could into the Western Cwm, and at the South Col and South-East Ridge approach to the summit of Everest. His observations were both optimistic and pessimistic: 'One cannot write off the south side as impossible until the approach from the head of the West Cwm to this remarkably airy col has been seen.' But then of the West Cwm: 'A trench overhung by these two tremendous walls might easily become a grave for any party which pitched its camp there.' Nepal Himalaya presents Tilman's favourite sketches, encounters with endless yetis, trouble with the porters, his obsessive relationship with alcohol and issues with the food. And so Tilman departs Nepal for the last time proper with these retiring words: 'If a man feels he is failing to achieve this stern standard he should perhaps withdraw from a field of such high endeavour as the Himalaya.'

'No sea voyage can be dull for a man who has an eye for the ever-changing sea and sky, the waves, the wind and the way of a ship upon the water.' So observes H.W. 'Bill' Tilman in this account of two lengthy voyages in which dull intervals were few and far between. In 1966, after a succession of eventful and successful voyages in the high latitudes of the Arctic, Tilman and his pilot cutter Mischief head south again, this time with the Antarctic Peninsula, Smith Island and the unclimbed Mount Foster in their sights. Mischief goes South is an account of a voyage marred by tragedy and dogged by crew trouble from the start. Tilman gives ample insight into the difficulties associated with his selection of shipmates and his supervision of a crew, as he wryly notes, 'to have four misfits in a crew of five is too many'. The second part of this volume contains the author's account of a gruelling voyage south, an account left unwritten for ten years for lack of time and energy. Originally intended as an expedition to the remote Crozet Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, this 1957 voyage evolved into a circumnavigation of Africa, the unplanned consequence of a momentary lapse in attention by an inexperienced helmsman. The two voyages described in Mischief goes South covered 43,000 miles over twenty-five months spent at sea and, while neither was deemed successful, published together they give a fine insight into Tilman's character.

This book is without a doubt the most remarkable true account ever written of adventure in Africa. It is the story of the life of George Rushby, an adventurer, ivory hunter, prospector, game rancher who immigrated to SA from Britain in search of a new life and all the curious and violent events that befell him until as a game ranger of Tanganyika. He faced and defeated the lion man-eters of the Njombe district. George Rushby vows to rid the land of these man-eaters, but he soon discovers they are unlike any lions he has ever encountered. He gets no help in his fight from the villagers who believe the killings to be the work of the local witchdoctor, a man they fear to cross - when a child Rushby loves is killed, the battle becomes personal. The reader is transported into a world of tumultuous events, many of which baffle all rational thought. George Rushy was duly referred to as "the prince of adventurers" and we join him on his travels and experiences in Africa.

A vogue for travel 'stunts' flourished in England between 1590 and the 1620s: playful imitations or burlesques of maritime enterprise and overland travel that collectively appear to be a response to particular innovations and developments in English culture. This study is the first full length scholarly work to focus on the curious phenomenon of 'madde voiages', as the writer William Rowley called them. Anthony Parr shows that the mad voyage (as Rowley and others conceived it) had surprisingly deep and diverse roots in traditional travel practices, in courtly play and mercantile custom, and in literary culture. Looking in detail at several of the best-documented exploits, Parr situates them in the ferment of such ventures during the period in question; but also reaches back to explore their classical and mediaeval antecedents, and considers their role in creating a template for eccentric English adventure in later centuries. Renaissance Mad Voyages brings together literary and historical enquiry in order to address the implications of an interesting and neglected cultural trend. Parr's investigation of the rash of travel exploits in the period leads to extensive research on the origins of the wager on travel and its role in the expansion of English tourism and trading activity.

In 1821, Catherine Hutton published 'The Tour of Africa', a three-volume work covering the entire continent. Although the book is framed as a first-person narrative and told in the voice of 'the son of an English country gentleman of good family', it is in fact a compilation of existing travel accounts, including those of Pococke, Bruce, Denon, Barrow, and Sonnini. Here, extracts from these accounts are woven together without attribution, creating a text which is both factual and fictional.

The nineteenth century was a period of peak popularity for travel to Latin America, where a new political independence was accompanied by loosened travel restrictions. Such expeditions resulted in numerous travel accounts, most by men. However, because this period was a time of significant change and exploration, a small but growing minority of female voyagers also portrayed the people and places that they encountered. Women through Women's Eyes draws from ten insightful accounts by female visitors to Latin America in the nineteenth century. These firsthand tales bring a number of Latin American women into focus: nuns, market women, plantation workers, the wives and daughters of landowners and politicians, and even a heroine of the independence movement. Questions of family life, religion, women's labor, and education are addressed, in addition to the interrelationships of men and women within the structure of Latin American societies. Women through Women's Eyes is a perceptive look at Latin American women from various walks of life during this period. Within these pages, the reader catches lengthy glimpses of the women on both sides of the travel accounts-author and subject-and thereby may examine them all and their societies close-up.

H.W. Tilman's Two Mountains and a River picks up where Mount Everest 1938 left off. In this instalment of adventures, Tilman and two Swiss mountaineers set off for the Gilgit region of the Himalaya with the formidable objective of an attempt on the giant Rakaposhi (25,550 feet). However, this project was not to be fulfilled. Not one to be dispirited, Tilman and his various accomplices - including pioneering mountaineer and regular partner Eric Shipton - continue to trek and climb in locations across China, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other areas of Asia, including the Kukuay Glacier, Muztagh Ata, the source of the Oxus river, and Ishkashim, where the author was arrested on suspicion of being a spy ... Two Mountains and a River brims with the definitive Tilman qualities - detailed observations and ever-present humour - that convey a strong appreciation of the adventures and mishaps he experiences along the way. With a new foreword from prominent trekker, climber and lecturer, Gerda Pauler, this classic mountaineering text maintains Tilman's name as a unique and inquisitive explorer and raconteur.

Mary Montagu was one of the most extraordinary characters in the world. She was a self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a radical, a feminist but also an entitled aristocrat and a society wit with powerful friends at court. In 1716 she travelled across Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British ambassador. Her letters remain as fresh as the day they were penned: enchanted by her discoveries of the life of Turkish women behind the veil, by Arabic poetry and by contemporary medical practices - including inoculation. For two years she lovingly observed Ottoman society as a participant, with affection, intelligence and an astonishing lack of prejudice.

For centuries, travel was an important part of a gardener's initial and continuing professional training. Educational journeys to parks and gardens at home and abroad were consistently recorded in lengthy reports and articles for professional journals. The travel report by Hans Jancke (1850-1920), a court gardener who served the Prussian kings in Potsdam, Germany, is typical of this genre. Jancke's manuscript, which until now remained unpublished, describes his 1874-1875 apprenticeship at Knowsley, the seat of the Earl of Derby near Liverpool, England.

First published in 1735, this account focuses on the customs, food, languages and religions of the peoples in the islands and settlements visited. It also has remarks on the gold, ivory and slave trades.

This eight-volume set in two parts gives voice to some intrepid women travellers touring post-Napoleonic France. The volumes are facsimile editions and are introduced and edited by experts in their field.

Artists and writers from the colder climes of northern Europe have long felt the lure of the South of the continent. Goethe was revitalised by his encounters with Mediterranean culture on his journey to Italy. Nietzsche took flight southwards to begin his life anew, while DH Lawrence sought the health-giving southern sun in Sicily and Sardinia. But across the centuries, other outposts of the South have provoked a similar obsession. The South Seas cast a spell over figures such as Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson and Paul Gauguin. The American Deep South and the southermost reaches of Latin America have been celebrated in the works of writers as diverse as John Muir, Jack Kerouac and Jorge Luis Borges. While the Great White South of the Antarctic has provided the backdrop to the darkest imaginings of Coleridge, Poe and Lovecraft. Even London, south of the river, is a place where novelists compete today to stake out a literary territory of their own. Moving between geography and mythology, literature and history, South is the first book to look at all things Southern in one volume. It examines the idea of the South as a symbol of freedom and escape, as well as the depository for many of our deepest unconscious fears and desires. It also charts the history of the South as the chosen location for the utopian visions of the North. From the beaches of Tahiti to the streets of Buenos Aires, from Naples to New Orleans, Merlin Coverley's brilliant and wide-ranging study throws light on the ways in which the idea of the South, in all its forms, has come to exert such a powerful hold on our collective imaginations.

'One of the most fascinating travel books of all time' Times Literary Supplement 'He could not have been more 'modern' if he had been born in the twentieth century' Evening Standard Ibn Battuta was the only medieval traveller who is known to have visited the lands of every Muhammadan ruler of his time and the extent of his journeys is estimated to be at least 75,000 miles. His work presents a descriptive account of Muhammadan society in the second quarter of the fourteenth century, which illustrates, among other things, how wide the sphere of influence of the Muslim merchants was. Ibn Battuta's interest in places was subordinate to his interest in people and his geographical knowledge was gained entirely from personal experience. For his details he relied exclusively on his memory, cultivated by the system of a theological education. This edition, translated afresh from the Arabic text, provides extensive notes which enable the journeys to be followed in detail. Important historical and religious background to the Travels is also added by H. A. R. Gibb.

This eight-volume facsimile set comprises firsthand accounts of continental travel in the early nineteenth century. Anne Carter witnesses the monarchy's return to power and the capital in her visit to Paris, while Frances Jane Carey ranges all over the country and particularizes the customs and everyday existence of its people. Marianne Baillie ventures much further afield in her 1819 work, exploring France, Italy and Switzerland, among other nations, while Elizabeth Byron daringly rides a boat along the Loire, defying the gendarmes as she navigates the culture and history she finds on the river's banks as well as the contemporary political exchanges that threaten to stop her tour. Each writer is excited about visiting new realms while also affirming the differences between their own country's practices and landscapes and those they witness on their Continental tours.

Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) was one of the most significant nineteenth-century British architects and a major player in the cultural shift from the Georgian eighteenth to the Victorian nineteenth century. Charles R. Cockerell (1788-1863) was one of the most significant nineteenth-century British architects and a major player in the cultural shift from the Georgian eighteenth to the Victorian nineteenth century. Cockerell's travelsin the eastern Mediterranean between 1810 and 1817 were the formative experience of his life. His forty letters from this period, held in the archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects and published here for the first time, give crucial day-to-day insights into his actions, thoughts and feelings in relation to the intricate histories of the re-discovery and sales of the Aegina and Bassae marbles and, equally importantly, illuminate his hugely significant work on temple architecture and sculpture in mainland Greece, the great cities of Asia Minor, and the significant temples of Sicily. Drawing on these letters, and on some 150 unpublished letters sent by his friends while they were all in Greece and now held in the British Museum, this book elucidates what Cockerell did and why by analyzing his methods of work and their significance. It discusses Cockerell's aesthetic and conceptual development during his time abroad, particularly his influential part in the changing vision of Greek sculpture and architecture, from Winkelmann's static ideal to one rooted in dramatic tension and contextual contingency. The book unravels the emergence of Cockerell's crucial historical perspective and shows how he arrived at a new view of the ancient Greek past as made up of real lived lives, rather than just existing as a back drop to the present. By offeringa complete edition of the RIBA letters, this book fills a significant gap in our understanding of the thought and work of one of the formative spirits of nineteenth century visual historical culture. SUSAN PEARCE is Professor Emeritus of Museum Studies, University of Leicester. THERESA ORMROD has extensive experience in archival research, manuscript transcription and editing.

Fanny Parkes, who lived in India between 1822 and 1846, was the ideal travel writer - courageous, indefatigably curious and determinedly independent. Her delightful journal traces her journey from prim memsahib, married to a minor civil servant of the Raj, to eccentric, sitar-playing Indophile, fluent in Urdu, critical of British rule and passionate in her appreciation of Indian culture. Fanny is fascinated by everything, from the trial of the thugs and the efficacy of opium on headaches to the adorning of a Hindu bride. To read her is to get as close as one can to a true picture of early colonial India - the sacred and the profane, the violent and the beautiful, the straight-laced sahibs and the more eccentric "White Mughals" who fell in love with India and did their best, like Fanny, to build bridges across cultures.

In 1793, Lord Macartney led the first British diplomatic mission to China in over one hundred years. This five-volume reset edition draws together British travel writings about China throughout the next century. The collection ends with the Boxer Uprising which marked the beginning of the end of informal British empire on the Chinese mainland.

In mid to late March 1913, as the storm clouds of the Great War which was to claim his life gathered, Edward Thomas took a bicycle ride from Clapham to the Quantock Hills. The poet recorded his journey through his beloved South Country and his account was published as In Pursuit of Spring in 1914. Regarded as one of his most important prose works, it stands as an elegy for a world now lost. What is less well-known is that Thomas took with him a camera, and photographed much of what he saw, noting the locations on the back of the prints. These have been kept in archives for many years and will now be published for the very first time in the book. Thomas journeys through Guildford, Winchester, Salisbury, across the Plain, to the Bristol Channel, recording the poet's thoughts and feelings as winter ends.

Accounts of travel to England reached unprecedented levels of popularity in the German states in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Competition therefore increased for travel writers to produce travelogues which offered the most authentic, original and vibrant picture of England. The wider range of narrative strategies which travellers consequently deployed increasingly drew on the emotional responses of their audience whether to serve a political purpose, show concern for the darker side to the Industrial Revolution or simply demonstrate the humanitarian interests of the travellers themselves. In this broad-ranging study, Alison E. Martin draws on a variety of travellers, men and women, canonical and forgotten, to chart the fascinating variety of styles and approaches which mark this highly interdisciplinary genre.

'We had climbed a mountain and crossed a pass; been wet, cold, hungry, frightened, and withal happy. One more Himalayan season was over. It was time to begin thinking of the next. "Strenuousness is the immortal path, sloth is the way of death".' First published in 1946, the scope of H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's When Men & Mountains Meet is broad, covering his disastrous expedition to the Assam Himalaya, a small exploratory trip into Sikkim, and then his wartime heroics. In the thirties, Assam was largely unknown and unexplored. It proved a challenging environment for Tilman's party, the jungle leaving the men mosquito-bitten and suffering with tropical diseases, and thwarting their mountaineering success. Sikkim proved altogether more successful. Tilman, who is once again happy and healthy, enjoys some exploratory ice climbing and discovers Abominable Snowman tracks, particularly remarkable as the creature appeared to be wearing boots - 'there is no reason why he should not have picked up a discarded pair at the German Base Camp and put them to their obvious use'. And then, in 1939, war breaks out. With good humour and characteristic understatement we hear about Tilman's remarkable Second World War. After digging gun pits on the Belgian border and in Iraq, he was dropped by parachute behind enemy lines to fight alongside Albanian and Italian partisans. Tilman was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his efforts - and the keys to the city of Belluno, which he helped save from occupation and destruction. Tilman's comments on the German approach to Himalayan climbing could equally be applied to his guerrilla warfare ethos. 'They spent a lot of time and money and lost a lot of climbers and porters, through bad luck and more often through bad judgement.' While elsewhere the war machine rumbled on, Tilman's war was fast, exciting, lightweight and foolhardy - and makes for gripping reading.

The area of Middle Eastern geography and travel has attracted large numbers of scholars over the last fifty years. This new collection from Routledge features key articles from the field to create a major and continuing resource for scholars and students alike. The first volume concentrates on the Islamic geographers who mapped and made navigable the routes followed by later travellers. While travel, and in particular the rihla (or 'travel to Mecca') did not depend for its impetus on formal geography, both were highlighted in the travellers' diaries and travelogues which helped to make known and illuminate the boundaries of an expanding empire. Links between geography and the pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medina are particularly significant. Because of their huge significance in illuminating the medieval world of Islam, a very large number if articles deal with the travels of Ibn Jubayr (1145-1217) (Volume II) and Ibn Battuta (1304-368/9 or 1377) (Volume III), while Volume IV covers the post-medieval and early modern period.