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Books > Travel > Travel writing > Classic travel writing
While French sea captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly may not have become
wealthy from his around-the-world travels between 1826 and 1829,
his trip has enriched historians interested in early
nineteenth-century California. Because of a poor choice in goods to
trade he found it necessary to spend nearly two years on the Alta
and Baja California coasts before disposing of his cargo and
returning to France. What was bad luck for Duhaut-Cilly was good
luck for us, however, because he recorded his impressions of the
region's natural history and human populations in a diary. This
translation of Duhaut-Cilly's writing offers today's readers a rare
eyewitness account of the pastoral society that was Mexican
California, including the missions at the height of their power.
This fully-annotated edition of Anna Maria Falconbridge's Two Voyages to Sierra Leone (1794) and Mary Ann Parker's A Voyage Round the World (1795) brings together the first published accounts by women of these new sites of British colonization. Laying the texts alongside one another brings into conjunction Britain's concurrent, late-18th-century systems of transportation and resettlement, convictism and slavery.
For years, serious naturalists have treasured their copies of Francis Harper's naturalist's edition of The Travels of William Bartram as the definitive version of Bartram's pioneering survey. Complete with notes and commentary, an annotated index, maps, a bibliography, and a general index, this classic is now back in print for the first time in decades. Harper's knowledge of natural history transforms Bartram's accounts of the southern states from a curious record of personal observation from the past into a guidebook useful to modern biologists, historians, ornithologists, and ethnologists. In 1773 the naturalist and writer William Bartram set out from Philadelphia on a four-year journey ranging from the Carolinas to Florida and Mississippi. For Bartram it was the perfect opportunity to pursue his interest in observing and drawing plants and birds. Combining precise and detailed scientific observations with a profound appreciation of nature, he produced a written account of his journey that would later influence both scientists and poets, including Wordsworth and Coleridge. Bartram was among the first to integrate scientific observations and personal commentary. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he condemned the idea that nature was simply a resource to be consumed. Instead, he championed the aesthetic and scientific values of an "infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful and pleasing." From his field journals he prepared a report for his benefactor and a larger report for the public. The former was rediscovered much later and published in 1943; the latter was published in 1791 and became the basis for the modern Bartram's Travels.
John Muir first saw Alaska in 1879, only twelve years after it was purchased from Russia by the United States. Four more times, in 1880, 1881, 1890, and 1899, he was drawn back to this land of rivers and glaciers, sunsets and northern lights, campfires and Arctic stars. Few people have lived so many adventures, yet Muir was not a mere collector of adventure; the hazards he encountered - and many were spine-tingling - came as a result of his intense desire to examine new aspects of the natural world.
Muir kept this journal on his first extended trip to Yosemite in 1869. Here he faithfully recorded his impressions of the dazzling animal and plant life he encountered in the magnificent Sierra.
At once a classic of travel literature and a penetrating portrait of a “sensibility on tour,” Flaubert in Egypt wonderfully captures the young writer’s impressions during his 1849 voyages. Using diaries, letters, travel notes, and the evidence of Flaubert’s traveling companion, Maxime Du Camp, Francis Steegmuller reconstructs his journey through the bazaars and brothels of Cairo and down the Nile to the Red Sea.
Volume 2 of great explorer's classic account of explorations of lakes of Central Africa, perilous journey down unexplored Congo River. Incredible hardships, perseverance. Total in set: 149 illustrations. Map.
The republication of the memoirs of Colonel John McDonell of Scottas (1728-1810) will be welcomed by Highlanders the world over. Neither romantic novel nor learned history can conjure up for us so vividly as this unashamedly prejudiced eyewitness account of the atmosphere of the aftermath of "the '45," the fierce loyalties and bitter hatreds, the high principles and barefaced villainy. We meet the ineffectual Stuart King, the saintly Duke of York, the unspeakable Captain Fergusson and many a minor character, each playing his part in the long drawn out British War of Succession and the death throes of Celtic society. The monograph traces John McDonell's story from his adventurous journey from Scotland to Rome at the age of 12 to his emigration to North America thirty-three years later.
"Here is a valuable and rare document providing a woman's perspective on a western passage that has received little attention from historians. Margaret Dwight's journal gives us a first-hand account that goes way beyond the usual reckoning of miles traveled and notes on the weather. She provides an intimate view of the people on the trail. From her observations we get a sense of the back-country settlements of Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1810, the language, the sounds, and even the smells of this early American West. Her journal is full of witty and occasionally sarcastic remarks. For all her prejudices and self-admitted pride, she emerges as a likeable person and valuable guide."-Jay Gitlin, in his introduction. In his introduction, Jay Gitlin, a professor of history at Yale University, says more about Margaret Van Horn Dwight's wagon journey in 1810 from New Haven, Connecticut, to Warren, Ohio, where she would find a husband, bear thirteen children, and die in middle-age.
Volume 1 of great explorer's classic account of explorations of lakes of Central Africa, perilous journey down unexplored Congo River. Incredible hardships, perseverance. Total in set: 149 illustrations. Map.
This definitive edition of Columbus's account of the voyage presents the most accurate printed version of his journal available to date. Unfortunately both Columbus's original manuscript, presented to Ferdinand and Isabella along with other evidence of his discoveries, and a single complete copy have been lost for centuries. The primary surviving record of the voyage-part quotation, part summary of the complete copy-is a transcription made by Bartolome de las Casas in the 1530s. This new edition of the Las Casas manuscript presents its entire contents-including notes, insertions, and canceled text-more accurately, completely, and graphically than any other Spanish text published so far. In addition, the new translation, which strives for readability and accuracy, appears on pages facing the Spanish, encouraging on-the- spot comparisons of the translation with the original. Study of the work is further facilitated by extensive notes, documenting differences between the editors' transcription and translation and those of other transcribers and translators and summarizing current research and debates on unanswered current research and debates on unanswered questions concerning the voyage. In addition to being the only edition in which Spanish and English are presented side by side, this edition includes the only concordance ever prepared for the Diario. Awaited by scholars, this new edition will help reduce the guesswork that has long plagued the study of Columbus's voyage. It may shed light on a number of issues related to Columbus's navigational methods and the identity of his landing places, issues whose resolution depend, at least in part, on an accurate transcription of the Diario. Containing day-by-day accounts of the voyage and the first sighting of land, of the first encounters with the native populations and the first appraisals of his islands explored, and of a suspenseful return voyage to Spain, the Diario provides a fascinating and useful account to historians, geographers, anthropologists, sailors, students, and anyone else interested in the discovery-or in a very good sea story. Oliver Dunn received the PH.D. degree from Cornell University. He is Professor Emeritus in Purdue University and a longtime student of Spanish and early history of Spanish America. James E. Kelley, Jr., received the M.A. degree from American University. A mathematician and computer and management consultant by vocation, for the past twenty years he has studied the history of European cartography and navigation in late-medieval times. Both are members of the Society for the History of Discoveries and have written extensively on the history of navigation and on Columbus's first voyage, Although they remain unconvinced of its conclusions, both were consultants to the National geographic Society's 1986 effort to establish Samana Cay as the site of Columbus's first landing.
The first edited volume of work by the legendary undercover
journalist
Born in 1831, Isabella, daughter of a clergyman, set off alone to the Antipodes in 1872 'in search of health' and found she had embarked on a life of adventurous travel. In 1873, wearing Hawaiian riding dress, she rode on her spirited horse Birdie through the American 'Wild West', a terrain only recently opened to pioneer settlement. Here she met Rocky Mountain Jim, her 'dear (one-eyed) desperado', fond of poetry and whisky - 'a man any women might love, but no sane woman would marry'. He helped her climb the 'American Matterhorn' and round up cattle on horseback. The wonderful letters which make up this volume were first published in 1879 and were enormously popular in Isabella Bird's lifetime. They tell of magnificent unspoilt landscapes and abundant wildlife, of small remote townships, of her encounters with rattlesnakes, wolves, pumas and grizzly bears and her reactions to the volatile passions of the miners and pioneer settlers.
Turkey, Egypt, and Syria: A Travelogue vividly captures the experiences of prominent Indian intellectual and scholar Shibli- Nu'ma-ni- (1857-1914) as he journeyed across the Ottoman Empire and Egypt in 1892. A professor of Arabic and Persian at the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) College at Aligarh, Nu'ma-ni- took a six-month leave from teaching to travel to the Ottoman Empire in search of rare printed works and manuscripts to use as sources for a series of biographies on major figures in Islamic history. Along the way, he collected information on schools, curricula, publishers, and newspapers, presenting a unique portrait of imperial culture at a transformative moment in the history of the Middle East. Nu'ma-ni- records sketches and anecdotes that offer rare glimpses of intellectual networks, religious festivals, visual and literary culture, and everyday life in the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. First published in 1894, the travelogue has since become a classic of Urdu travel writing and has been immensely influential in the intellectual and politicalhistory of South Asia. This translation, the first into English, includes contemporary reviews of the travelogue, letters written by the author during his travels, and serialized newspaper reports about the journey, and is deeply enriched for readers and students by the translator's copious multilingual glosses and annotations. Nu'ma-ni- 's chronicle offers unique insight into broader processes of historical change in this part of the world while also providing a rare glimpse of intellectual engagement and exchange across the porous borders of empire.
The critical and biographical introduction tells of Lady Wortley Montagu's travels through Europe to Turkey in 1716, where her husband had been appointed Ambassador. Her lively letters offer insights into the paradoxical freedoms conferred on Muslim women by the veil, the value of experimental work by Turkish doctors on inoculation, and the beauty of Arab poetry and culture.
This unusual study combines two books in one: the 1794 autobiographical travel narrative of an Indian, Dean Mahomet, recalling his years as camp-follower, servant, and subaltern officer in the East India Company's army (1769 to 1784); and Michael H. Fisher's portrayal of Mahomet's sojourn as an insider/outsider in India, Ireland, and England. Emigrating to Britain and living there for over half a century, Mahomet started what was probably the first Indian restaurant in England and then enjoyed a distinguished career as a practitioner of 'oriental medicine, i.e., therapeutic massage and herbal steam bath, in London and the seaside resort of Brighton. This is a fascinating account of life in late eighteenth-century India - the first book written in English by an Indian - framed by a mini-biography of a remarkably versatile entrepreneur. "Travels" presents an Indian's view of the British conquest of India and conveys the vital role taken by Indians in the colonial process, especially as they negotiated relations with Britons both in the colonial periphery and the imperial metropole. Connoisseurs of unusual travel narratives, historians of England, Ireland, and British India, as well as literary scholars of autobiography and colonial discourse will find much in this book. But it also offers an engaging biography of a resourceful, multidimensional individual.
When the famous anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss arrived in Rio de Janeiro, he had one book in his pocket: Jean de Lery's "History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil." Lery had undertaken his fascinating and arduous voyage in 1556, as a youthful member of the first Protestant mission to the New World. Janet Whatley presents the first complete English translation of one of the most vivid early European accounts of life in the New World.
The violence, wonder, and nostalgia of voyaging are nowhere more
vivid than in the literature of South Seas exploration. "Preserving
the Self in the South Seas" charts the sensibilities of the lonely
figures that encountered the new and exotic in terra incognita.
Jonathan Lamb introduces us to the writings of South Seas
explorers, and finds in them unexpected and poignant tales of
selves alarmed and transformed.
A classic travelogue that brilliantly conjures 1930s Britain. In this series of pen-portraits of England from the 1930s, Victor Canning 'evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life' (The Bookseller), from Cumbria to Cornwall. Canning's heart-warming and humorous observations of sleepy villages, pastoral scenes and busy industries are a delightful time capsule into life in England during the interwar years. 'What does the word England mean to you? To all of us England means something different, and yet I think there is for every man and woman some little corner which is more England than anywhere else...' ***PRAISE FOR EVERYMAN'S ENGLAND*** 'Wonderful... elegant, humorous, exuberant essays.' Guardian 'Evocatively captures the pattern and colour of English life.' The Bookseller 'Canning finds beauty everywhere, but never sentimentalises, and is consistently honest enough to highlight poverty and social inequality... Canning, at his very best when waxing lyrical about landscapes, offers vivid images of the English countryside...' The Daily Mail
A peasant in peaked hat and blue shirt, with trousers rolled up high above his bare knees, crossed the road and silently examined the tricycle. "You have a good horse," he then said; "it eats nothing." -from An Italian Pilgrimage The 1880s was an exhilarating time for cycling pioneers like Elizabeth and her husband Joseph. As boneshakers and high-wheelers evolved into tandem tricycles and the safety bike, cycling grew from child's play and extreme sport into a leisurely and, importantly, literary mode of transportation. The illustrated travel memoirs of "those Pennells" were-and still are-highly entertaining. They helped usher in the new age of leisure touring, while playfully hearkening back to famous literary journeys. In this new edition, Dave Buchanan provides rich cultural contexts surrounding the Pennells' first two adventures. These long out-of-print travel memoirs will delight avid cyclists as well as scholars of travel literature, cycling history, women's writing, Victorian literature, and illustration.
Johann Georg von Hahn - a nineteenth-century Austrian diplomat and explorer - is generally considered to be the founder of Albanian Studies as a scholarly discipline. It was he who first studied the Balkan country and its people, and who brought them to the attention of the academic world. Despite this acclaim, his work has not been widely available in English until now. In this volume, Robert Elsie has translated Hahn's most important works relating to his travels and studies in Albania during the mid-nineteenth century. Hahn's interests were broad, but he was especially interested in the tribes of Albania and Kosovo and made several ethnographic studies of the cultures and traditions of the tribes he encountered on his travels - including the Kelmendi, Hoti and Kastrati tribes. This volume will be invaluable readers for scholars of Balkan history and anthropology.
Polar explorer John Ross (1777 1856) sailed with William Edward Parry in 1818 to seek a North-West Passage from Baffin Bay. The attempt was unsuccessful, and Ross was widely blamed for its failure. In 1829 he set out on a privately funded expedition on the steamship Victory, accompanied by his nephew James Clark Ross, to try again, returning to England in late 1833. Using survival techniques learnt from the Inuit he befriended, Ross kept his crew healthy through four icebound winters. While the voyage once again failed to find a North-West Passage, it surveyed the Boothia Peninsula and a large part of King William Land. It was also valuable for its scientific findings. Ross published this two-volume work in 1835. Volume 1 summarises previous Polar exploration before describing the voyage; Volume 2 contains scientific reports, information on the Inuit, and a vocabulary of their language.
Carl Lumholtz (1851 1922) was a Norwegian ethnographer and explorer who, soon after publishing an influential study of Australian Aborigines (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), spent five years researching native peoples in Mexico. This two-volume work, published in 1903, describes his expeditions to remote parts of north-west Mexico, inspired by reports about indigenous peoples who lived in cliff dwellings along mountainsides. While in the US in 1890 on a lecture tour, Lumholtz was able to raise sufficient funds for the expedition. He arrived in Mexico City that summer, and after meeting the president, Porfirio D az, he set off with a team of scientists for the Sierra Madre del Norte mountains in the north-west of Mexico, to find the cave-dwelling Tarahumare Indians. Volume 1 covers the start of the expedition and Tarahumare life, etiquette and beliefs, as well as details of the natural history of this little-explored region.
Carl Lumholtz (1851 1922) was a Norwegian ethnographer and explorer who, soon after publishing an influential study of Australian Aborigines (also reissued in the Cambridge Library Collection), spent five years researching native peoples in Mexico. This two-volume work, published in 1903, describes his expeditions to remote parts of north-west Mexico, inspired by reports about indigenous peoples who lived in cliff dwellings along mountainsides. While in the US in 1890 on a lecture tour, Lumholtz was able to raise sufficient funds for the expedition. He arrived in Mexico City that summer, and after meeting the president, Porfirio D az, he set off with a team of scientists for the Sierra Madre del Norte mountains in the north-west of Mexico, to find the cave-dwelling Tarahumare Indians. Volume 2 focuses mainly on the neighbouring Huichols people, their daily life, and their religious practices, including shamanism. |
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