Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is best known for designing parks in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Boston, and the grounds of the Capitol in Washington. But before he embarked upon his career as the nation's foremost landscape architect, he was a correspondent for the New York Times , and it was under its auspices that he journeyed through the slave states in the 1850s. His day-by-day observations,including intimate accounts of the daily lives of masters and slaves, the operation of the plantation system, and the pernicious effects of slavery on all classes of society, black and white,were largely collected in The Cotton Kingdom . Published in 1861, just as the Southern states were storming out of the Union, it has been hailed ever since as singularly fair and authentic, an unparalleled account of America's "peculiar institution."

'The charm of certain vacant grassy spaces, in Italy, overfrowned by masses of brickwork that are honeycombed by the suns of centuries, is something that I hereby renounce once for all the attempt to express; but you may be sure that whenever I mention such a spot enchantment lurks in it.' - Henry James In these essays on travels in Italy written from 1872 to 1909, Henry James explores art and religion, political shifts and cultural revolutions, and the nature of travel itself. James's enthusiastic appreciation of the unparalleled aesthetic allure of Venice, the vitality of Rome, and the noisy, sensuous appeal of Naples is everywhere marked by pervasive regret for the disappearance of the past and by ambivalence concerning the transformation of nineteenth-century Europe. John Auchard's lively introduction and extensive notes illuminate the surprising differences between the historical, political, and artistic Italy of James's travels and the metaphoric Italy that became the setting of some of his best-known works of fiction. This edition includes an appendix of James's book reviews on Italian travel-writing.

After living abroad for 20 years, Henry James returned to his native America and travelled down the East Coast from Boston to Florida. This a journal describing his feelings on the rediscovery of the New York of his childhood, and the growth of modern commercial America. He muses on Thoreau, Hawthorne and Emerson; in Washington, he finds a cityscape devoid of spiritual symbols; in Richmond, thoughts of the civil war haunt him. Published in 1907, this journal also served as a farewell address to the country James would never live in again.

Consequent upon the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), the Africanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland launched the Niger-Benue expedition to investigate possible riverine communications throughout the Niger-Benue river system. Responsibility for the expedition ultimately fell to Paul Staudinger, a young entomologist with no experience of inner Africa.
This translation of Staudinger's Im Herzen der Haussalander opens up an invaluable source book of interest not only to the historian but to specialists in many disciplines. It deals with every aspect of the life of the Hausa-Fulani people: their history, environment, flora and fauna, culture, economy, and social structure as observed by a patriotic young German scientist of a century ago. The chronological narrative of the journey is followed by a series of appendices, each providing a systematic summary of a particular branch of knowledge.
Foreword by Paul Lovejoy."

On April 28, 1846, Francis Parkman left Saint Louis on his first expedition west. The Oregon Trail documents his adventures in the wilderness, sheds light on America's westward expansion, and celebrates the American spirit.

In A Tramp Abroad, Mark Twain’s unofficial sequel to The Innocents Abroad, the author records his hilarious and diverse observations and insights while on a fifteen-month walking trip through Central Europe and the Alps. “Here you have Twain’s inimitable mix,” writes Dave Eggers in his Introduction, “of the folksy and the effortlessly erudite, his unshakable good sense and his legendary wit, his knack for the easy relation of a perfect anecdote, and some achingly beautiful nature writing.”

This Modern Library Paperback Classic reproduces the text of the first American edition and features new explanatory notes and a critical Afterword by Kerry Driscoll, professor of English at Saint Joseph College in Connecticut.

In 1934, famed British traveler Freya Stark sailed down the Red Sea, alighting in Aden, located at the tip of the Arabian peninsula. From this backwater outpost, Stark set forth on what was to be her most unforgettable adventure: Following the ancient frankincense routes of the Hadhramaut Valley, the most fertile in Arabia, she sought to be the first Westerner to locate and document the lost city of Shabwa. Chronicling her journey through the towns and encampments of the Hadhramaut, The Southern Gates of Arabia is a tale alive with sheikhs and sultans, tragedy and triumph. Although the claim to discovering Shabwa would not ultimately be Stark's, The Southern Gates of Arabia, a bestseller upon its original publication, remains a classic in the literature of travel. This edition includes a new Introduction by Jane Fletcher Geniesse, Stark's biographer.

Here is the adventure that started John Muir on a lifetime of discovery. Taken from his earliest journals, this book records Muir's walk in 1867 from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf Coast. In his distinct and wonderful style, Muir shows us the wilderness, as well as the towns and people, of the South immediately after the Civil War.

In 1897 the Victorian novelist George Gissing undertook a brief but eventful journey in southern Italy. His itinerary took him from Naples to Reggio di Calabria, via Paola, Cosenza, Crotone and Squillace, through the area once known as Magna Graecia. Meditating on the vestiges of Greco-Roman civilization, Gissing visited tombs and temples, museums and cathedrals, in search of the imprint of antiquity and "that old world which was the imaginative delight of my boyhood." The result was By the Ionian Sea, first published in 1901. Gissing's journey by boat, train, and carriage revealed not just the ruined glories of a classical past, but also the hardships of rural life in turn-of-the-century rural Italy. Meeting poverty-stricken peasants and corrupt local officials, he endured discomfort, danger and illness in a remote and little visited corner of Europe. Yet throughout he appreciated the warmth and generosity shown to him by local people, curious about this solitary stranger. By turns lyrical and melancholic, Gissing's masterpiece of travel writing alternates between light and dark, life and death, Paganism and Christianity. Looking at Italy in both its classical and contemporary dimensions, By the Ionian Sea celebrates Calabria's rich cultural past and beautiful landscapes while providing a candid account of the region's hardship and poverty. More than a century after its first publication, this is the first critical edition of the book in English.

In 1840, French novelist Theophile Gautier was hired by the journal "La Presse" to write regular installments of a travelogue of his journey to and around Spain. Gautier recorded his experiences and impressions and the result was the 1845 book "Voyage en Espagne" - later translated into English as "A Romantic in Spain". For Gautier, Spain promised the allure of an exotic and passionate culture; it was a revelation, he said later, like discovering his true home, the native land of his spirit. Gautier covered the olive groves of Andalucia, the vibrant street life of Madrid, the central plains of La Mancha, and the Moorish buildings of Seville and Cordoba. Gautier, travelling by mule, carriage, or wagon, came into contact with a rich panoply of people and places. Gautier reveals a Spain in transition, emerging from civil war and a feudal past into the modern world.

Thomas Coryate (1576-1617) was one of the great early travellers, opening up Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, the Holy Land and Mogul India to his amazed - and sometimes disgusted - readers. In 1608 he set out to travel - mostly on foot - through France and Italy to Venice, returning through Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands. His book reporting on what he had seen and experienced, Coryats Crudites, was published in 1611 and was a huge success, providing both useful information and entertainment through the reported encounters and mishaps of the apparently tireless author. Nowadays few people have actually read the work, which stretches to over a million words, but Coryate demands to be known more widely, since he was the person almost single-handedly responsible for the creation of the Grand Tour, that inescapable finishing process which was to mark a rite of passage for the aristocracy and the upper middle classes of Britain for over 150 years. As one modern editor of Coryate has commented: 'the scope, reliability and, not least, the entertainment value of the Crudites give it an assured place among the best in the literature of travel'.

Written in response to Charles Dickens' travels in the United States in 1842, "American Notes "is a fascinating and often highly critical portrait of the young American nation. Dickens touches on subjects as diverse as Wall Street, the American prison system, slavery, and the American press.

The essays in this collection -- a selection of papers presented at the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies workshop, `Travel and Cartography from Bede to the Enlightenment' (August 22-23, 2001) - track a variety of travel narratives from the eighth century to the eighteenth. Their voyages, which extend from from the literal to the spiritual, the political, and the artistic, show how the concept of narrative mapping has changed over time, and how it encompasses cosmogony, geography, chorography, topography, and inventory. Each essay is concerned in some way with the application of the medieval geographical imagination, or with the enduring influence of that imagination upon post-medieval travel and discovery writing.This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate university students and to a broad range of academics across the disciplines of literature and history. It will be of particular interest to medievalists and scholars of the early modern period and to readers of, the new (1997) scholarly journal, Studies in Travel Writing.The volume will also appeal to a more general, informed readership interested in the history of travel and the history of ideas, early contact with indigenous people, and encounters between East and West.

Cooper published, eventually, five volumes of travel writings in epistolary form on his journeys around western Europe, all now available from CSP. This volume (first published with the "Switzerland" volume) relates in part to a journey along the Rhine to Switzerland (Cooper's second visit) but is also much concerned with his friendship with Lafayette.

Cooper published, eventually, five volumes of travel writings in epistolary form on his journeys around western Europe, all now available from CSP. This volume describes his travels and observations with his family in large parts of Italy.

Mungo Park's "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa" has long been regarded as a classic of African travel literature. In fulfilling his mission to find the Niger River and in documenting its potential as an inland waterway for trade, Park was significant in opening Africa to European economic interests. His modest, low-key heroism made it possible for the British public to imagine themselves as a welcomed force in Africa. As a tale of adventure and survival, it has inspired the imaginations of readers since its first publication in 1799 and writers from Wordsworth and Melville to Conrad, Hemingway, and T. Coreghessan Boyle have acknowledged the influence of Park's narrative on their work.
Unlike the large expeditions that followed him, Park traveled only with native guides or alone. Without much of an idea of where he was going, he relied entirely on local people for food, shelter, and directions throughout his eventful eighteen month journey. While his warm reaction to the people he met made him famous as a sentimental traveler, his chronicle also provides a rare written record of the lives of ordinary people in West Africa before European intervention. His accounts of war, politics, and the spread of Islam, as well as his constant confrontations with slavery as practiced in eighteenth-century West Africa, are as valuable today as they were in 1799. In preparing this new edition, editor Kate Ferguson Marsters presents the complete text and includes reproductions of all the original maps and illustrations.
Park's narrative serves as a crucial text in relation to scholarship on the history of slavery, colonial enterprise, and nineteenth-century imperialism. The availability of this full edition will give a new generation of readers access to a travel narrative that has inspired other readers and writers over two centuries and will enliven scholarly discussion in many fields.

This guide is an aid to Irish historians on the use of travel narratives as source-material. It features a discussion of factors that need to be considered in analyzing these narratives, notably the identity of the traveller, his or her motives for travel and writing, the period and mode of travel, the itinerary followed and the content itself. Part Two of the book comprises detailed annotations of more than 100 selected English-language narratives or accounts of journeys or tours made in Ireland from the second quarter of the 17th century to the middle of the 20th century.

Like many of his contemporaries, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle traveled extensively. This eloquent travelogue recreates in amusing detail the difficulties ordinary tourists encountered while travelling abroad, while at the same time giving a lucid picture of colonial life at the early part of the 20th century.

On August 4, 1895, at a 19,000 foot pass on the north side of Goring La in Tibet, only 48 miles from Lhasa, a 43-year-old Englishman, his 55-year-old wife, and a fox terrier confronted over 150 Tibetans armed with primitive matchlocks. The Englishman was St. George Littledale. His wife, Teresa, had shared in all of his adventures. In the 19th century, Teresa and George Littledale were known as the greatest English explorers of their day, journeying further into the hidden lands of Asia than any Western explorer had previously achieved. Yet, because they never published their own account of their journeys, for more than a century their story has remained largely forgotten. Now, the authors, having discovered the Littledales' diaries and letters, have for the first time pieced together their remarkable, adventurous, and courageous lives.

In 1891, New York "Sun" reporter and travel writer J. R. Spears accepted an invitation to visit Death Valley to write about the region and explore its borax mines. Spears, the first professional journalist to visit, photograph, and report on the region, provided the American reading public with an engaging and informed account of Death Valley and its surrounding desert country. Through nineteen chapters, Spears examines the 20-mule teams used in borax mining, freighting in the rugged desert landscape, and various desert characters--including "Desert Tramps" and a California bear hunter.

Long considered an important literary and regional history of Death Valley and a primary source of information, "Illustrated Sketches of Death Valley and Other Borax Deserts of the Pacific Coast" will appeal to enthusiasts of the region and of the American West.

This text chronicles the 13th-century world, from Venice, the birthplace of Marco Polo, to the far reaches of Asia. Marco Polo Tells of the foreign peoples he meets as he travels by foot, horse and boat through the orient. He visits places such as Persia, Tibet, India and China where he stays at the courts of the Kublai Khan.

An ardent early suffragette, Edna Brush Perkins set out in 1920 with her friend, Charlotte Hannahs Jordan, to journey into the Mojave, both women seeking to escape civilization and their struggle to secure voting rights for women. The Mojave at that time was considered to be a desolate, inaccessible region--part of the fading American frontier. Originally published in 1922, The White Heart of Mojave is Perkins' account of this journey.

Perkins' evocative writing describes the landscape and the people she encounters. As editor Peter Wild writes, this is ultimately the story of two wealthy women who enter Death Valley "as a sort of middle-aged lark" and "emerge from the trip profoundly changed."