The diary of Anton Reiff Jr. (c. 1830-1916) is one of only a handful of primary sources to offer a firsthand account of antebellum riverboat travel in the American South. The Pyne and Harrison Opera Troupe, a company run by English sisters Susan and Louisa Pyne and their business partner, tenor William Harrison, hired Reiff, then freelancing in New York, to serve as musical director and conductor for the company's American itinerary. The grueling tour began in November 1855 in Boston and then proceeded to New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincinnati, where, after a three-week engagement, the company boarded a paddle steamer bound for New Orleans. It was at that point that Reiff started to keep his diary. Diligently transcribed and annotated by Michael Burden, Reiff's diary presents an extraordinarily rare view of life with a foreign opera company as it traveled the country by river and rail. Surprisingly, Reiff comments little on the Pyne-Harrison performances themselves, although he does visit the theaters in the river towns, including New Orleans, where he spends evenings both at the French Opera and at the Gaiety. Instead, Reiff focuses his attention on other passengers, on the mechanics of the journey, on the landscape, and on events he encounters, including the 1856 Mardi Gras and the unveiling of the statue of Andrew Jackson in New Orleans's Jackson Square. Reiff is clearly captivated by the river towns and their residents, including the enslaved, whom he encountered whenever the boat tied up. Running throughout the journal is a thread of anxiety, for, apart from the typical dangers of a river trip, the winter of 1855-1856 was one of the coldest of the century, and the steamer had difficulties with river ice. Historians have used Reiff's journal as source material, but until now the entire text, which is archived in Louisiana State University's Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library, has only been available in its original state. As a primary source, the published journal will have broad appeal to historians and other readers interested in antebellum riverboat travel, highbrow entertainment, and the people and places of the South.

The Irish-American physicist, academic and traveller John Freely wrote more than sixty lively books on travel, history and science before he died in 2017, aged 90. But It was Istanbul, where he emigrated with his family in 1960 to take up a post teaching physics at the American Robert College, that turned him into a writer. His first book, 'Strolling Through Istanbul' – written with his fellow academic Hilary Sumner-Boyd – was an instant success when it was published in 1972 and has never been out of print since. With the exception of Oğuz, so thin that he was known as The Ghost because he barely cast a shadow, everyone in John Freely's rumbustious memoir, including the author himself, is larger than life. Bohemian Istanbul was a haven for myriad misfits who found their feet in the city. Clamorous, glamorous, eccentric, cosmopolitan and frequently outrageous, they included the 'berserker' Peter Pfeiffer, a resourceful exile with three passports; Aliye Berger, the beautiful queen of bohemian Pera; the writer James Baldwin and, fleetingly, the future Pope John XXIII. This elegy for a lost world encapsulates the flavour of their daily life and nightly excesses. Well lubricated with lemon vodka and Hill Cocktails served by Sumner-Boyd's gloomy housekeeper, 'Monik Depressive', the Freely crowd weave their way from the Galatasaray fish market and the taverns of Çiçek Pasajı to the Russian restaurant Rejans, and frequently on to the Freely household on the Bosphorus hills, where a party will soon be in full swing and eggnog flowing freely. 'Stamboul Ghosts' is lllustrated with Ara Guler's poignant black-and-white photographs, which make of Freely's beloved city an evocative stage-set.

Pausanias, the Greek historian and traveler, lived and wrote around the second century AD, during the period when Greece had fallen peacefully to the Roman Empire. While fragments from this period abound, Pausanias' Periegesis ("description") of Greece is the only fully preserved text of travel writing to have survived. This collection uses Pausanias as a multifaceted lens yielding indispensable information about the cultural world of Roman Greece.

What was the purpose of representing foreign lands for writers in the English Renaissance? This innovative and wide-ranging study argues that writers often used their works as vehicles to reflect on the state of contemporary English politics. Through critical discussions of fictional and non-fictional texts, Hadfield explores representations of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and the Far East, as well as some of the problems involved in the usual assumption that we can make sense of the past with the categories available to us. His work offers fresh readings of Shakespeare, Marlowe, More, and many others.

Whether looking for the sources of the Nile, the Niger, or the Amazon, penetrating the Australian outback, or searching for the Northwest Passage, the Victorians were intrepid explorers, zealously expanding the limits of science and human knowledge. In "Bright Paradise," Peter Raby describes brave voyages and gives us vivid and unforgettable portraits of the larger-than-life personalities of Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, and Henry Bates, glorious examples of Victorian energy and confidence. He also explores wider issues such as the growth of knowledge and the spread of the empire.

Witty, provocative, and exciting in the breadth of its research, this book charts an important period of scientific advance and transforms it into a compelling narrative.

Alfred Russel Wallace's The Malay Archipelago is a work of astounding breadth and originality that chronicles the British naturalist's scientific exploration of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and New Guinea between 1854 and 1862. An intrepid explorer who earned his living by collecting bird skins, Wallace also catalogued the vast number of plant and animal species that inhabit this unique geographical area. In addition, he includes numerous observations on the people, their languages, and ways of living and social organization, as well as geological insights into the nature and activity of volcanoes and the destructive force of nature. Colourful personal anecdotes based on experiences during his travels also pepper the text. First published in 1869, The Malay Archipelago provided some of the initial evidence for the modern theory of evolution. Discursive, captivating, occasionally offensive, but always wonderfully descriptive, it remains one of the most extensive works of natural history ever compiled. The Earl of Cranbrook is an expert in the environmental biology of the Malaysian region, and has a special interest in the life and career of Alfred Russel Wallace. 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.

Full of humor, profundity, and obsession, these are tales of writers on peregrine paths. Some set out in search of legends or artistic inspiration; others seek spiritual epiphany or fulfillment of a promise. Their journeys lead them variously to Dracula's castle, Laura Ingalls Wilder's prairie, the Grimms' fairy-tale road, Mayan temples, Nathaniel West's California, the Camino de Santiago trail, Scott's Antarctica, the Marquis de Sade's haunted manor, or the sacred city of Varanasi. All of these pilgrimages are worthy journeys-redemptive and serious. But a time-honored element of pilgrimage is a suspension of rules, and there is absurdity and exuberance here as well.

In May 1935, twenty-two-year-old Max Reisch and nineteen-year-old Helmuth Hahmann set out in a small motor car to find a land route from India to China. Their journey across Asia took them from Haifa to Tokyo.In this lively account, the author regales us with one story after another, struck with wonder or struggling against disaster in countries which deeply concern us today: Iraq with its oilfields, ancient Iran in the throes of modernisation, proud Afghanistan, and British India with its stunning variety of civilisation.Before the building of the Burma Road, driving from India to southern China meant sinking over the axles in mud on forest tracks and crossing torrents on rickety ferryboats. It also meant encounters with strange and fascinating peoples and places. With war already on the horizon, Reisch and Hahmann completed their round-the-world trip via Japan and the United States, arriving back in Vienna in December 1936.Originally written by Max Reisch in German, this brand new English translation by Alison Falls captures all the excitement of the journey, and features fascinating historical photos of the journey from the Reisch archives.

'Upon this trackless waste of snow, cut by a shrewd wind they sat down and wept.' In China to Chitral H.W. 'Bill' Tilman completes one of his great post-war journeys. He travels from Central China, crossing Sinkiang, the Gobi and Takla Makan Deserts, before escaping to a crumbling British Empire with a crossing of the Karakoram to the new nation of Pakistan. In 1951 there still persisted a legend that a vast mountain, higher than Everest, was to be found in the region, a good enough reason it seems for Tilman to traverse the land, 'a land shut in on three sides by vast snow ranges whose glacial streams nourish the oases and upon whose slopes the yaks and camels graze side by side; where in their felt yorts the Kirghiz and Kazak live much as they did in the days of Genghis Khan, except now they no longer take a hand in the devastation of Europe'. Widely regarded as some of Tilman's finest travel writing, China to Chitral is full of understatement and laconic humour, with descriptions of disastrous attempts on unclimbed mountains with Shipton, including Bogdo Ola-an extension of the mighty Tien Shan mountains- and the Chakar Aghil group near Kashgar on the old silk road. His command of the Chinese language-five words, all referring to food-proves less than helpful in his quest to find a decent meal: 'fortunately, in China there are no ridiculous hygienic regulations on the sale of food'. Tilman also has several unnerving encounters with less-than-friendly tribesmen ... Tilman starts proper in Lanchow where he describes with some regret that he is less a traveller and more a passenger on this great traverse of the central basin and rim of mountain ranges at Asia's heart. But Tilman is one of our greatest ever travel writers, and we become a passenger to his adventurers.

John Moore was a Scottish physician who travelled extensively and wrote immensely popular accounts of these, which brought him international fame. Despite this, his travel writings have not been available since 1820. This collection will be the first in almost two centuries to present his 'Travel Writings' to historians and literary scholars.

Founded by Alexander the Great over 2,300 years ago, Alexandria has belonged both to the Mediterranean and to Egypt, a luxuriant out-planting of Europe on the coast of Africa, but also a city of the East-the fabled cosmopolitan town that fascinated travelers, writers, and poets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where French and Arabic, Italian and Greek were spoken in the cafes and on the streets.
In the pages of An Alexandrian Anthology, we follow the delight of travelers discovering the strangeness of the city and its variety and pleasures. Most of all they are haunted by the city's resplendent past-the famous Library, the temple built by Cleopatra for Antony, the great Pharos lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the world, of which only traces remain-we follow our travelers here too as they voyage through an immense ghost city of the imagination."

In 1862, Lucie Duff Gordon left her husband and three children in England and settled in Egypt, where she remained for the rest of her short life. Seeking respite from her tuberculosis in the dry air, she moved into a ramshackle house above a temple in Luxor, and soon became an indispensable member of the community. Setting up a hospital in her home, she welcomed all - from slaves to local leaders. Her humane, open-minded voice shines across the centuries through these letters - witty, life-affirming, joyous, self-deprecating and utterly enchanted by her Arab neighbours.

We are obsessed with 'barbarians'. They are the 'not us', who don't speak our language, or 'any language', whom we depise, fear, invade and kill; for whom we feel compassion, or admiration, and an intense sexual interest; whom we often outdo in the barbarism we impute to them; and whose suspected resemblance to us haunts our introspections and imaginings. This book looks afresh at how we have confronted the idea of 'barbarism', in ourselves and others, from the conquest of the Americas to the Nazi Holocaust, through the voices of many writers, including Montaigne, Swift and Shaw.

Laos, 1900 - a frontier land caught in a power struggle between Eastern kingdoms and Western colonial powers, a fertile place teetering between an ancient pastoral existence and the modern machine age. Alfred Raquez's Laotian Pages vividly describes his exploration of the diverse kingdoms of Laos at the turn of the last century with the same Parisian verve and ironic turn of mind that he brought to his first travel book, In the Land of Pagodas. Raquez's keen eye and sensitivity to the exotic in both nature and human culture, combined with a mastery of the genre and his hallmark conversational style, transport the reader to the largely unexplored frontier of fin-de-siecle Indochina. Long known only to specialists on the history and ethnography of the region, this new work presents a scholarly translation into English together with Raquez's original photographs that will finally allow a wide audience to experience the joys and hardships of travel in a land that is both timeless and forever changing. In addition, a wide-ranging introduction and extensive footnotes provide historical context and `then-and-now' perspectives on the cultures and landscape that have undergone massive change in the past century. In the Land of Pagodas, a scholarly translation by William L. Gibson and Paul Bruthiaux of Alfred Raquez's book of travels through China in 1899, was published in 2017 by NIAS Press.

In 1765, Mirza Sheikh I'tesamuddin, a Bengali munchi (secretary) employed by the East India Company, traveled on a mission to Britain to seek protection for the Mogul emperor Shah Alam II. The mission was aborted by the greed and duplicity of Robert Clive, but it resulted in this remarkable account of the Mirza's travels in Britain and Europe. This is an entertaining, unique, and culturally valuable document of those journeys.

INTRODUCED BY JAN MORRIS '[This] gloriously ornate account of that epic journey is a classic' ROBERT MACFARLANE 'The feeling of being lost in time and geography with months and years hazily sparkling ahead is a prospect of inconjecturable magic.' In 1933, aged eighteen, Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on his 'great trudge', a year-long journey by foot from the Hook of Holland to Istanbul. Three decades later he wrote A Time of Gifts, the sparklingly original account of the first part of this youthful adventure, which took him through the Low Countries, up the Rhine, through Germany, down the Danube, through Austria and Czechoslovakia, and as far as Hungary. Alone, carrying only a rucksack and with a small allowance of only a pound a week, Fermor had planned to sleep rough - to live 'like a tramp, a pilgrim, or a wandering scholar' - but a chance introduction in Bavaria led to comfortable stays in castles, and provided a glimpse of the old Europe of princes and peasants. Hailed as a masterpiece, A Time of Gifts is in part a coming-of-age memoir, but it is also a rich and compelling portrait of a continent that - despite its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers and grand cities - was soon to be swept away by war, modernisation and profound social change. 'Not only is this journey one of physical adventure but of cultural awakening. Architecture, art, genealogy, quirks of history and language are all devoured -- and here passed on -- with a gusto uniquely his' COLIN THUBRON, SUNDAY TIMES 'One of the most romantic books of the twentieth century, Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of a long walk across Europe is also a literary treasure, a rich blend of action and observation' GUARDIAN

'Out of the sea, as if Homer himself had arranged it for me, the islands bobbed up, lonely, deserted, mysterious in the fading light' Enraptured by a young woman's account of the landscapes of Greece, Henry Miller set off to explore the Grecian countryside with his friend Lawrence Durrell in 1939. In The Colossus of Maroussi he describes drinking from sacred springs, nearly being trampled to death by sheep and encountering the flamboyant Greek poet Katsumbalis, who 'could galvanize the dead with his talk'. This lyrical classic of travel writing represented an epiphany in Miller's life, and is the book he would later cite as his favourite. 'One of the five greatest travel books of all time' Pico Iyer

The Marquis de Custine's record of his trip to Russia in 1839 is a brilliantly perceptive, even prophetic, account of one of the world's most fascinating and troubled countries. It is also a wonderful piece of travel writing. Custine, who met with people in all walks of life, including the Czar himself, offers vivid descriptions of St. Petersburg and Moscow, of life at court and on the street, and of the impoverished Russian countryside. But together with a wealth of sharply delineated incident and detail, Custine's great work also presents an indelible picture--roundly denounced by both Czarist and Communist regimes--of a country crushed by despotism and "intoxicated with slavery."
"Letters from Russia," here published in a new edition prepared by Anka Muhlstein, the author of the Goncourt Prize-winning biography of Custine, stands with Tocqueville's Democracy in America as a profound and passionate encounter with historical forces that are still very much at work in the world today.

This volume contains Elizabeth Isabella Spence's Letters from the North Highlands, one of the Romantic era's most successful non-fictional accounts of the Scottish Highlands (1816), a work that, while influenced by Grant's Letters from the Mountains (1806), attempted to move the genre of the Scottish travelogue in new directions.

'For most men, as Epicurus has remarked, rest is stagnation and activity madness. Mad or not, the activity that I have been pursuing for the last twenty years takes the form of voyages to remote, mountainous regions.' H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's fourteenth book Ice with Everything describes three more of those voyages, 'the first comparatively humdrum, the second totally disastrous, and the third exceedingly troublesome'. The first voyage describes Tilman's 1971 attempt to reach East Greenland's remote and ice-bound Scoresby Sound. The largest fjord system in the world was named after the father of Whitby whaling captain, William Scoresby, who first charted the coastline in 1822. Scoresby's two-volume Account of the Arctic Regions provided much of the historical inspiration for Tilman's northern voyages and fuelled his fascination with Scoresby Sound and the unclimbed mountains at its head. Tilman's first attempt to reach the fjord had already cost him his first boat, Mischief, in 1968. The following year, a 'polite mutiny' aboard Sea Breeze had forced him to turn back within sight of the entrance, so with a good crew aboard in 1971, it was particularly frustrating for Tilman to find the fjord blocked once more, this time by impenetrable sea ice at the entrance. Refusing to give up, Tilman's obsession with Scoresby Sound continued in 1972 when a series of unfortunate events led to the loss of Sea Breeze, crushed between a rock and an ice floe. Safely back home in Wales, the inevitable search for a new boat began. 'One cannot buy a biggish boat as if buying a piece of soap. The act is almost as irrevocable as marriage and should be given as much thought'. The 1902 pilot cutter Baroque was acquired and after not inconsiderable expense, proved equal to the challenge. Tilman's first troublesome voyage aboard her to West Greenland in 1973 completes this collection.

This volume contains the first volume of Anne Grant's Letters from the Mountains (1806), one of the Romantic era's most successful non-fictional accounts of the Scottish Highlands.

In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson boarded a train in Concord, Massachusetts, bound for a month-and-a-half-long tour of California—an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. On their journey across the American West, he and his companions would take in breathtaking vistas in the Rockies and along the Pacific Coast, speak with a young John Muir in the Yosemite Valley, stop off in Salt Lake City for a meeting with Brigham Young, and encounter a diversity of communities and cultures that would challenge their Yankee prejudices.Based on original research employing newly discovered documents, The California Days of Ralph Waldo Emerson maps the public story of this group's travels onto the private story of Emerson's final years, as aphasia set in and increasingly robbed him of his words. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.

Laos, 1900 - a frontier land caught in a power struggle between Eastern kingdoms and Western colonial powers, a fertile place teetering between an ancient pastoral existence and the modern machine age. Alfred Raquez's Laotian Pages vividly describes his exploration of the diverse kingdoms of Laos at the turn of the last century with the same Parisian verve and ironic turn of mind that he brought to his first travel book, In the Land of Pagodas. Raquez's keen eye and sensitivity to the exotic in both nature and human culture, combined with a mastery of the genre and his hallmark conversational style, transport the reader to the largely unexplored frontier of fin-de-siecle Indochina. Long known only to specialists on the history and ethnography of the region, this new work presents a scholarly translation into English together with Raquez's original photographs that will finally allow a wide audience to experience the joys and hardships of travel in a land that is both timeless and forever changing. In addition, a wide-ranging introduction and extensive footnotes provide historical context and `then-and-now' perspectives on the cultures and landscape that have undergone massive change in the past century. In the Land of Pagodas, a scholarly translation by William L. Gibson and Paul Bruthiaux of Alfred Raquez's book of travels through China in 1899, was published in 2017 by NIAS Press.

A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written: Marco Polo's seminal account of his journeys in the east, in a collectible clothbound edition. Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time. His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China, after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions. On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war and met Rustichello of Pisa, with whom he collaborated on this book. His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad: unfamiliar religions, customs and societies; the spices and silks of the East; the precious gems, exotic vegetation and wild beasts of faraway lands. Evoking a remote and long-vanished world with colour and immediacy, Marco's book revolutionized western ideas about the then unknown East and is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time. For this edition - the first completely new English translation of the Travels in over fifty years - Nigel Cliff has gone back to the original manuscript sources to produce a fresh, authoritative new version. The volume also contains invaluable editorial materials, including an introduction describing the world as it stood on the eve of Polo's departure, and examining the fantastical notions the West had developed of the East. Marco Polo was born in 1254, joining his father on a journey to China in 1271. He spent the next twenty years travelling in the service of Kublai Khan. There is evidence that Marco travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire and it is fairly certain he visited India. He wrote his famous Travels whilst a prisoner in Genoa. Nigel Cliff was previously a theatre and film critic for The Times and a regular writer for The Economist, among other publications, and now writes historical nonfiction books. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots, was published in 2007 and shortlisted for the Washington-based National Award for Arts Writing. His second book, The Last Crusade: Vasco da Gama and the Birth of the Modern World appeared in 2011 and was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize.

In 1960, when he was almost sixty years old, John Steinbeck set out to rediscover his native land. He felt that he might have lost touch with its sights, sounds and the essence of its people.

Accompanied only by his dog, Charley, he travelled all across the United States in a pick-up truck. His journey took him through almost forty states, and he saw things that made him proud, angry, sympathetic and elated.

All that he saw and experienced is described with remarkable honesty and insight.