Immediately popular when it first appeared around 1356, "The Travels of Sir John Mandeville" became the standard account of the East for several centuries?a work that went on to influence luminaries as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, Swift, and Coleridge. Ostensibly written by an English knight, the "Travels" purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land, Egypt, India, and China. Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan's army and to have journeyed to ?the lands beyond countries populated by dog-headed men, cannibals, Amazons, and pygmies. This translation by the esteemed C.W.R.D. Moseley conveys the elegant style of the original, making this an intriguing blend of fact and absurdity, and offering wondrous insight into fourteenth- century conceptions of the world.

The era in which Ibn Battuta traveled to the East was exciting but turbulent, cursed by the Black Plague and the fall of mighty dynasties. His account provides a first-hand account of increased globalisation due to the rise of Islam, as well as the relationship between the Western world and India and China in the 14th century. There are insights into the complex power dynamics of the time, as well a personal glimpse of the author's life as he sought to survive them, always staying on the move. The Ri?la contains great value as a historical document, but also for its religious commentary, especially regarding the marvels and miracles that Ibn Battuta encountered. It is also an entertaining narrative with a wealth of anecdotes, often humorous or shocking, and in many cases touchingly human. The book records the journey of Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan jurist who travels to the East, operating at high levels of government within the vibrant Muslim network of India and China. It offers fascinating details into the cultures and dynamics of that region, but goes beyond other travelogues due to the dramatic narrative of its author - tragedies and wonders fill its pages - shared for the greater glory of Allah and the edification of its contemporary audience in the West.

The early seventeenth-century traveler Thomas Coryate's five-month tour of Western Europe culminated in Coryats Crudities, one of the strangest travelogues published in early modern England. A charismatic raconteur, Coryate blends his detailed ""observations"" of churches, palaces, and local customs (including the firstaccount of forks in English) with lengthy historical digressions and lively accounts of personal misadventure. Coryate, who had strong connections to the political, legal, and literary circles of early modern England, became a figure well known for his eccentricity and odd style, though he was also respected for his antiquarian scholarship and facility with foreign languages. Now, he is remembered as one of the most unique travel-writing voices ever known in English letters. This edition abridges Crudities' more than 900 pages to a manageable size, focusing on episodes most likely to be of interest to students - such as Coryat's descriptions of Venetian mountebanks, courtesans, and Jews; his crossing of the Alps; and his attendance at a Corpus Christi celebration in Paris. An engaging introduction situates the book in the context of Coryat's fascinating life, and the text is helpfully annotated throughout. The selection of contextual materials includes illustrations from the first edition, along with a sampling from another eccentric feature of the Crudities: a collection of mock commendatory poems making fun of Coryate and his journey, contributed by dozens of noblemen and literati (including the poets Ben Jonson and John Donne). Coryate, who was in on the joke, carefully curated the comic persona emerging from these verses, making creative use of media culture to gain personal celebrity.

'Oh! Monsieur is Persian? That's most extraordinary! How can someone be Persian?' Two Persian travellers, Usbek and Rica, arrive in Paris just before the death of Louis XIV and in time to witness the hedonism and financial crash of the Regency. In their letters home they report on visits to the theatre and scientific societies, and observe the manners and flirtations of polite society, the structures of power and the hypocrisy of religion. Irony and bitter satire mark their comparison of East and West and their quest for understanding. Unsettling news from Persia concerning the female world of the harem intrudes on their new identities and provides a suspenseful plot of erotic jealousy and passion. This pioneering epistolary novel and work of travel-writing opened the world of the West to its oriental visitors and the Orient to its Western readers. This is the first English translation based on the original text, revealing this lively work as Montesquieu first intended. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Cecil Torr's 19th-century studies of Rhodes, in the Greek Dodecanese, off the coast of Asia Minor, were the first and most authoritative English guides to the island's multi-layered history: nothing approaching them had been attempted before. Impeccably qualified - Harrow (Arthur Evans was a class-mate), Trinity Cambridge, and Inner Temple barrister of formidable reputation - Cecil Torr had the true antiquarian's obsession for factual presentation and detailed analyses of primary sources. The result is a rock-solid account of the story of Byzantine Rhodes and the times of the Knights of St John, including the extraordinary events of the Great Siege which culminated in the Knights' expulsion from the island in 1522. First published in 1887, Rhodes in Modern Times is an historical guide to the Byzantine and medieval landscapes of Rhodes. Strolling with Torr up the 'Street of the Knights', or on the great walls of the Old Town, or around its now peaceful moat, takes you as close as you'll safely dare to the events of this front line in East/West relations of 500 years ago: a guided tour in and out of three 'time zones' - Rhodes in her medieval splendour, at the turn of the 19th century, and today. This edition of Torr's classic (recommended by Lawrence Durrell, no less, referring to "... the scholarly Englishman who has given us the best historical monograph on the island... Read him and you will see why..." - "Reflections on a Marine Venus") includes an extended prologue (in Greek with English translation) by Dr Elias Kollias, a leading authority on medieval and Byzantine Rhodes. Additional sections include a biography of Cecil Torr, detailed chronologies of Rhodes' history, and a 'tour' with Torr in and around the famous Old Town.

Within 'Sirens and Seriemas', Paul Brooke explores the wild places of Brazil through photography and poetry. A former biologist and naturalist, Brooke travelled the Amazon and Pantanal regions of Brazil studying culture, history and natural history. The poems address pressing environmental issues such as deforestation, extinction, overhunting, overpopulation, urbanization and wildness. The photographs chronicle the amazing beauty and danger, the culture of Amazonian peoples and multi-colored landscapes.

This an authoritative scholarly edition of Mansfield's camping journal, offering new understandings of her colonial life. Katherine Mansfield filled the first half of the 'Urewera Notebook' during a 1907 camping tour of the central North Island, shortly before she left New Zealand forever. Her camping notes offer a rare insight into her attitude to her country of birth, not in retrospective fiction but as a nineteen year old still living in the colony. This publication aims to be the first scholarly edition of the 'Urewera Notebook', providing an original transcription, a collation of the alternative readings and textual criticism of prior editors, and new information about the politics, people and places Mansfield encountered on her journey. As a whole, this edition challenges the debate that has focused on Mansfield's happiness or dissatisfaction throughout her last year in New Zealand to reveal a young writer closely observing aspects of a country hitherto beyond her experience and forming a complex critique of her colonial homeland. This is a new, more accurate transcription of the notebook, which can be read either as standalone text, or in tandem with commentary and textual notes. It's an introductory essay drawing on important new developments in New Zealand literary criticism, advances in historiography of the period and legal history, notably Judith Binney's Te Urewera: Encircled Lands (2009), Richard Boast's Buying the Land, Selling the Land (2008) and the Waitangi Tribunal Reports. It offers a route map, revised itinerary and authoritative annotation for the text, all based on fresh archival research of primary history material. It offers previously unpublished photographs from a Beauchamp family photograph album in the Alexander Turnbull Library and in the Ebbett Papers held at the Hawke's Bay Museum.

'Their fruits be diverse and plentiful, as nutmegs, ginger, long pepper, lemons, cucumbers, cocos, sago, with divers other sorts...' Scholar, spy, diplomat and supreme propagandist for Elizabethan sea power, Richard Hakluyt's accounts of famed explorers mythologised a nation growing rapidly aware of the size and strangeness of the world - and determined to dominate it. Introducing Little Black Classics: 80 books for Penguin's 80th birthday. Little Black Classics celebrate the huge range and diversity of Penguin Classics, with books from around the world and across many centuries. They take us from a balloon ride over Victorian London to a garden of blossom in Japan, from Tierra del Fuego to 16th century California and the Russian steppe. Here are stories lyrical and savage; poems epic and intimate; essays satirical and inspirational; and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions. Richard Hakluyt (c 1552-1616). Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries is available in Penguin Classics.