Few writers have known Italy better than Stendhal: he was only seventeen when he first rode south across the Alps in the wake of Napoleon's armies, and he continued to travel and to live in Italy until a few months before his death. Some of his visits lasted only a few weeks, others continued for years, and he spent the last decade of his life as French Consul in Civitavecchia - yet he was never a tourist in the ordinary sense of the word. Italy, for Stendhal, was never a mere treasure trove of ruins, museums and galleries: it was the life of the country which fascinated him, its spirit, the inner workings of its heart and mind. This picture - or rather this living dream - of Italy he created is as fresh and tantalizing today as it was almost two centuries ago.

Focusing upon three previously unpublished accounts of youthful English travellers in Western Europe (in contrast to the renowned but maturely retrospective memoirs of other seventeenth-century figures such as John Evelyn), this study reassesses the early origins of the cultural phenomenon known as the 'Grand Tour'. Usually denoted primarily as a post-Restoration and eighteenth-century activity, the basis of the long term English fascination with the 'Grand Tour' was firmly rooted in the mid-Tudor and early-Stuart periods. Such travels were usually prompted by one of three reasons: the practical needs of diplomacy, the aesthetic allure of cultural tourism, and the expediencies of political or religious exile. The outbreak of the English Civil War during the late-1640s acted as a powerful stimulus to this kind of travel for male members of both royalist and parliamentarian families, as a means of distancing them from the social upheavals back home as well as broadening their intellectual horizons. The extensive editorial introductions to this publication of the experiences of three young Englishmen also consider how their travel records have survived in a variety of literary forms, including personal diaries (Montagu), family letters (Hammond) and formal prose records (Maynard's travels were written up by his servant, Robert Moody), and how these texts should now be interpreted not in isolation but alongside the diverse collections of prints, engravings, curiosities, coins and antiquities assembled by such travellers.

Sailing six thousand miles in eighty days, Allcard makes the classic southern route trade-wind crossing westward, and not without incident-severe gales, thief-catching in Spain, avoiding a seductive blonde in Gibraltar, encountering sharks and shoals of flying fish, and narrowly escaping falling overboard to his death when knocked out by gear falling from aloft. Allcard's plan to dodge the worst of the hurricane season on his return voyage is not accommodated by the elements. Through gales and headwinds, and one terrible storm, he takes seventy-four days to reach the Azores from New York, arriving minus his mizzen mast, desperately exhausted, injured, and hungry. The next leg, to Casablanca, is enlivened by a female stowaway, before he makes a safe return to England. Whether describing the pleasures or the trials, the phosphorescent nights or the storms, the operation of his ship or his own introspections, Edward Allcard eloquently conveys his deep appreciation of the sea, and the escape from modern civilisation it offers him.

It is widely believed that people living in the Middle Ages seldom traveled. But, as Medieval Travel and Travelers reveals, many medieval people - and not only Marco Polo - were on the move for a variety of different reasons. Assuming no previous knowledge of medieval civilizations, this volume allows readers to experience the excitement of men and women who ventured into new lands. By addressing cross-cultural interaction, religion, and travel literature, the collection sheds light on how travel shaped the way we perceive the world, while also connecting history to the contemporary era of globalization. Including a mix of complete sources, excerpts, and images, Medieval Travel and Travelers provides readers with opportunities for further reflection on what medieval people expected to find in foreign locales, while sparking curiosity about undiscovered spaces and cultures.

Popular English travel guides from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries asserted that women who wandered too far afield were invariably suspicious, dishonest, and unchaste. As the essays in Travel and Travail reveal, however, early modern women did travel, often quite extensively, with no diminution of their moral fiber. Female travelers were also frequently represented on the English stage and in other creative works, both as a reproach to the ban on female travel and as a reflection of historical women's travel, whether intentional or not. Travel and Travail conclusively refutes the notion of female travel in the early modern era as "an absent presence." The first part of the volume offers analyses of female travelers (often recently widowed or accompanied by their husbands), the practicalities of female travel, and how women were thought to experience foreign places. The second part turns to literature, including discussions of roving women in Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish, and Thomas Heywood. Whether historical actors or fictional characters, women figured in the wider world of the global Renaissance, not simply in the hearth and home.

Some of the extraordinary women whose writings are including in this collection are observers of the world in which they wander; their prose rich in description, remarkable in detail. Mary McCarthy conveys the vitality of Florence while Willa Cather's essay on Lavandou foreshadows her descriptions of the French countryside in later novels. Others are more active participants in the culture they are visiting, such as Leila Philip, as she harvests rice with chiding Japanese women, or Emily Carr, as she wins the respect and trust of the female chieftain of an Indian village in Northern Canada. Whether it is curiosity about the world, a thirst for adventure or escape from personal tragedy, all of these women are united in that they approached their journeys with wit, intelligence, compassion and empathy for the lives of those they encountered along the way. Features writing from Gertrude Bell, Edith Wharton, Isabella Bird, Kate O'Brien, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and many others.