Often amusing, sometimes romantic or fraught with danger, these 30 short stories are about local people, spectacular places and the special wildlife the author sets out to find. The stories include seeking out Arabian Oryx on the searing plains of the Saudi desert; eiderdown collecting in Iceland, crouching in swirling clouds and darkness on a knife-edge ridge in the rugged Madeiran mountains and swimming with Grey Seals off the Pembroke coast. The author describes incredible encounters with spectacular animals from lumbering manatees and dangerous rhinos to unforgettable experiences such as being led by a honeyguide with a Kenyan Dorobo tribesman to the nest of wild bees and watching cranes tip-toeing their courtship dances. These hugely entertaining tales visit places as diverse as the Florida Everglades, England's New Forest, Iceland's offshore islands, the Empty Quarter of the Saudi Desert, the tiny remnants of Jordan's Azraq wetland and the impressive oak dehesas of Extremadura. Sit back and visit the world!

"A fine piece of work and a great delight."--John McPhee

Christine Jerome decides to repeat the 266-mile Adirondack canoe journey of George Washington Sears (pen name "Nessmuk"), a famous adventure and nature writer for the popular magazine "Forest and Stream" in the late nineteenth century. Part of what made his 1883 journey remarkable was the length of his canoe--a mere nine feet. The "Sairy Gamp" was the lightest of cockleshells, but could navigate rough lakes and stony rapids. Sears could heave it over his head and portage it between lakes for miles. So Jerome has a similar canoe built for herself, and sets off to see what has changed and what has remained on the water trail through the mountains.

The result is a classic of canoe literature: a beautiful paean to journeying silently in light craft. Her nature writing and knowledge of local history lends a depth and substance to every mile. She conjures up Teddy Roosevelt, the Whitneys and Vanderbilts, as well as old hermits and eccentrics. She tells of legendary crimes committed along the lakeshores, while keeping her expert ear tuned for birdsong in the trees.

An unforgettable account of traveling by canoe, and traveling back in time.

Oliver Sacks, the bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterized portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern . . . Since childhood Oliver has been fascinated by the ability of these primitive plants to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is the enthralling account of his trip, alongside a group of fellow fern enthusiasts, to the beautiful province of Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing together Oliver's endless curiosity about natural history and the richness of human culture with his sharp eye for detail, this book is a captivating evocation of a place, its plants, its people, and its myriad wonders. 'Light and fast-moving, unburdened by library research but filled with erudition' - New Yorker

Someone once asked me how much I charge to guide people into the woods. "That's free," I explained. "Anyone can get themselves into the woods. You pay me to get you out." Can anyone really know the northern forest? It is something you feel more in your heart than in your head. You may be able to locate your place on a map, but can you pinpoint the places the forest has hold of your soul? For more than forty years, Maine Guide Earl Brechlin has sought the answers. Through this series of interconnected essays, Brechlin recounts the annual canoe trips to the North Maine Woods he has made with a small group of friends, closing with the death of his twin brother and the group's last trip to spread his brother's ashes in the place he loved best. Often humorous and thrilling at once, the heartfelt narrative is peppered with tidbits of history, woods lore, and sage advice from a seasoned outdoorsman. What shines through is the author's profound love of the natural world and his place in it.

The Scottish Highlands form the highest mountains in the British Isles, a broad arc of rocky peaks and deep glens stretching from the outskirts of Glasgow, Perth and Aberdeen to the remote and storm-lashed Cape Wrath in Scotland's far northwest. The Romans never conquered the region - according to the historian Tacitus, the Highland warrior chieftain Calgacus dubbed his people 'the last of the free' - and in the Dark Ages the island of Iona became home to a Celtic Church that was able to pose a serious challenge to the Church of Rome. Few travellers ever ventured there, however, disturbed by the tales of wild beasts, harsh geography and the bloody conflicts of warring families known as the clans. But after the defeat of Bonnie Prince Charlie at the Battle of Culloden the influence of the clans was curbed and the Scottish Highlands became celebrated by poets, writers and artists for their beauty rather than their savagery. In the nineteenth century, inspired by the travel reportage of Samuel Johnson, the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of William Wordsworth and the very public love of the Highlands espoused by Queen Victoria, tourists began flocking to the mountains - even as Highlanders were being removed from their land by the brutal agricultural reforms known as the Clearances. With the popularity of hiking and the construction of railways, including the famed West Highland line across Rannoch Moor, the fate of the Highlands as one of the great tourist playgrounds of the world was sealed. Andrew Beattie explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this landscape, where the legacy of events from the first Celtic settlements to the Second World War and from the construction of military roads to mining for lead, slate and gold have all left their mark.

When Jose Saramago decided to write a book about Portugal, his only desire was that it be unlike all other books on the subject, and in this he has certainly succeeded. Recording the events and observations of a journey across the length and breadth of the country he loves dearly, Saramago brings Portugal to life as only a writer of his brilliance can. Forfeiting the usual sources such as tourist guides and road maps, he scours the country with the eyes and ears of an observer fascinated by the ancient myths and history of his people. Whether it be an inaccessible medieval fortress set on a cliff, a wayside chapel thick with cobwebs, or a grand mansion in the city, the extraordinary places of this land come alive.
Always meticulously attentive to those elements of ancient Portugal that persist today, he examines the country in its current period of rapid transition and growth. "Journey to Portugal" is an ode to a country and its rich traditions.

'Quietly triumphant.' Donal Ryan 'Ambitious and gentle.' Belinda McKeon 'A terrific book.' Michael Harding In May 2020, John Connell finds himself, like so many others, confined to his local area, the opportunity to freely travel and socialise cut short. His attention turns to the Camlin river - an ever-present source of life for his town's inhabitants and, for John, a site of boyhood adventure, first love, family history and local legend. He decides to canoe its course with his friend, Sunday Times journalist Peter Geoghegan, a two-day trip requiring physical exertion and mental resilience. As the world grows still around them, the river continues to teem with life - a symphony of buzzing mayfly and jumping trout. During their meander downstream, John reflects on his life: his travels, his past relationships and his battle with depression, as well as on Irish folklore, geopolitics and philosophy. The Stream of Everything is both a reverie and a celebration of close observation; a winding, bucolic account of the summer we discovered home.

"An uncensored road trip through gay American life in the early sixties "Jack Nichols is now known as a founding father of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, editor of GAY (the first gay weekly newspaper), co-founder of the Mattachine Societies of Washington, DC, and Florida, and a warrior who broke ground for gay equality. In his early twenties, however, he was dedicated to romance, ardor, and wanderlust-living the life of a gypsy and making love with abandon. "MORE EXCITING THAN THE WILDEST FICTION. . . . Jack takes his reader on the road with him (Jack often hitchhiking in only T-shirt and jeans) where he encounters, beds down (and sometimes hustles) dozens of attractive 'numbers' who come his way.""- Donn Teal, Author of The Gay Militants: 1971 & 1994""This might be called Jack Nichols' version of Kerouac's beat classic "On the Road." With a variety of companions, and with little money in his pocket, in the early 60s, he drove, hitchhiked, rode buses, and even walked for a couple of long stretches from Washington, DC, to New York and then through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. He recalls in considerable detail a variety of individuals with whom he had erotic encounters. The title The Tomcat Chronicles is fully descriptive.""- Vern L. Bullough, PhD, RN, Editor of Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context""Jack Nichols, the gay liberation pioneer, has been a lifelong friend who helped to illuminate my concept of homophobia. Oscar Wilde believed one's life should be a work of art. Jack's life, which has always combined courage, social awareness and sexual passion, is certainly such a work.""- George Weinberg, PhD, Author of Society and the Healthy Homosexual and 13 other books (the psychotherapist credited with coining the term homophobia)""THE VIVID DETAIL AND GRACEFUL PROSE THAT CHARACTERIZE THE WRITING OF JACK NICHOLS open a window into a time long before gay men appeared weekly on tv or before anti-sodomy laws had been banned.""- Rodger Streitmatter, PhD, Author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America""The Tomcat Chronicles is a gay pioneer's version of "City of Night."- James T. Sears, PhD, Author of Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South; Editor of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education (from the Foreword)"

Beautiful, empowering and exhilarating: She Explores is a spirited celebration of female bravery and courage, and an inspirational companion for any woman who wants to travel the world on her own terms. Combining breathtaking travel photography with compelling personal narratives, She Explores shares the stories of 40 diverse women on unforgettable journeys in nature: women who live out of vans, trucks, and vintage trailers, hiking the wild, cooking meals over campfires, and sleeping under the stars. Women biking through the countryside, embarking on an unknown road trip, or backpacking through the outdoors with their young children in tow. Complementing the narratives are practical tips and advice for women planning their own trips, including preparing for a solo hike, must-haves for a road-trip kitchen, planning ahead for unknown territory, and telling your own story. A visually stunning and emotionally satisfying collection for any woman craving new landscapes and adventure. Gale Straub is the founder of She-Explores.com, a media platform for curious, creative women who love travel and outdoor adventure. For any woman who has ever been called outdoorsy... or who wants to be. Beautiful, empowering, and exhilarating, She Explores will inspire even the most outdoor-averse woman to connect with the landscape, take a leap of faith and find her community. Makes a wonderful birthday, graduation, or new going away gift for an adventurous woman. Great coffee table book to spark conversation about travel and exploration.

This collection will bring together a selection of works by travellers studying natural philosophy as well as natural history. The set will cover a wide geographical spread, including accounts from Australia, Asia, Africa and South America. The style of writing and subject matter are also diverse. Some offer more reflective writing, mingling scientific observation with romantic musing and high style, others have a more specific focus - such as Bates description of Mimicry in butterflies in Bali. The first volume includes a general introduction to the collection and each succeeding volume also includes a new introduction by the editor, which places each work in its historical and intellectual context.

The first of its kind: an exploration of one of the most mysterious countries in the world, as told by one of the first outsiders to access the country in its entirety

For almost fifty years Burma was ruled by a paranoid military dictatorship and isolated from the outside world. A historic 2015 election swept an Aung San Suu Kyi-led civilian government to power and was supposed to usher in a new golden era of democracy and progress, but Burma remains unstable and undeveloped, a little-understood country.

Nothing is straightforward in this captivating land that is home to a combustible mix of races, religions and resources. A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma reveals a country where temples take priority over infrastructure, fortune tellers thrive and golf courses are carved out of war zones. Setting out from Yangon, the old capital, David Eimer travels throughout this enigmatic nation, from the tropical south to the Burmese Himalayas in the far north, via the Buddhist-centric heartland and the jungles and mountains where rebel armies fight for autonomy in the longest-running civil wars in recent history. The story of modern Burma is told through the voices of the people Eimer encounters along the way: former political exiles, the squatters in Yangon's shanty towns, radical monks, Rohingya refugees, princesses and warlords, and the ethnic minorities clustered along the country's frontiers.

In his vivid and revelatory account of life, history, culture and politics, David Eimer chronicles the awakening of a country as it returns to the global fold and explores a fractured nation, closed to foreigners for decades. Authoritative and ground-breaking, A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma is set to be a modern classic of travel writing.

In 1897, two sisters embark from Pennsylvania in search of soul-broadening experiences in the Indian Southwest, newly opened to intrepid travellers. Their letters and photographs are the heart of this brilliantly reassembled grand tour.

Berlin is much more than the former capital of Nazi Germany--it is often described today as innovative, fast-paced, avant-garde, rough, exciting, and even sexy. At the political and geographical centre of the Second World War and the Cold War, the city had already been at the cultural heart of Europe for hundreds of years--and continues to set architectural, musical, literary and fashion trends in the twenty-first century. Berlin has been shaped by politicians such as Frederick the Great, dictators like Adolf Hitler and architects such as Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Hans Scharoun, and it boasts icons including the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag. Yet no one individual put a decisive stamp on the city, which had to reinvent itself again and again because of its turbulent history. The staid baroque capital of Prussia was succeeded by the up-and-coming capital of newly united Germany; village homes replaced by tenement housing in the nineteenth century; the hierarchical orderliness of the early twentieth century followed by the unconventional statements of modernism. After the destruction of the Second World War, the Berlin Wall cut the city in half and created the brooding image of the Cold War frontier, and since the dramatic collapse of the Wall the latest version of a unified Berlin has arisen as new Germany's capital. Even today, the various communities that now make up the city have their own distinctive identities. Norbert Schurer's cultural guide explores the juxtaposition of Berlin's past and present in history, architecture, literature, art, entertainment and religion and offers an insider account that provides contexts to make sense of Berlin's dazzling variety.

No one writes about mountaineering and its attendant hardships and victories more brilliantly than critically acclaimed author Jon Krakauer. In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, he explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, the Eiger. Always with a keen eye, an open heart, and a hunger for the ultimate experience, he gives us unerring portraits of the mountaineering experience. Yet Eiger Dreams is more about people than about rock and ice-people with that odd, sometimes maniacal obsession with mountain summits that sets them apart from other men and women. Here we meet Adrian the Romanian, determined to be the first of his countrymen to solo Denali; John Gill, climber not of great mountains but of house-sized boulders so difficult to surmount that even demanding alpine climbs seem easy; and many more compelling and colorful characters. In the most intimate piece, "The Devils Thumb," Krakauer recounts his own near-fatal, ultimately triumphant struggle with solo-madness as he scales Alaska's Devils Thumb. Eiger Dreams is stirring, vivid writing about one of the most compelling and dangerous of all human pursuits.

Translating Italy in the Eighteenth Century offers a historical analysis of the role played by translation in that complex redefinition of women's writing that was taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. It investigates the ways in which women writers managed to appropriate images of Italy and adapt them to their own purposes in a period which covers the 'moral turn' in women's writing in the 1740s and foreshadows the Romantic interest in Italy at the end of the century. A brief survey of translations produced by women in the period 1730-1799 provides an overview of the genres favoured by women translators, such as the moral novel, sentimental play and a type of conduct literature of a distinctively 'proto-feminist' character. Elizabeth Carter's translation of Francesco Algarotti's II Newtonianesimo per le Dame (1739) is one of the best examples of the latter kind of texts. A close reading of the English translation indicates a 'proto-feminist' exploitation of the myth of Italian women's cultural prestige. Another genre increasingly accessible to women, namely travel writing, confirms this female interest in Italy. Female travellers who visited Italy in the second half of the century, such as Hester Piozzi, observed the state of women's education through the lenses provided by Carter. Piozzi's image of Italy, a paradoxical mixture of imagination and realistic observation, became a powerful symbolic source, which enabled the fictional image of a modern, relatively egalitarian British society to take shape.

Translating Travel examines the relationship between travel writing and translation, asking what happens when books travel beyond the narrow confines of one genre, one literary system and one culture. The volume takes as its starting point the marginal position of contemporary Italian travel writing in the Italian literary system, and proposes a comparative reading of originals and translations designed to highlight the varying reception of texts in different cultures. Two main themes in the book are the affinity between the representations produced by travel and the practices of translation, and the complex links between travel writing and genres such as ethnography, journalism, autobiography and fiction. Individual chapters are devoted to Italian travellers' accounts of Tibet and their English translations; the hybridization of journalism and travel writing in the works of Oriana Fallaci; Italo Calvino's sublimation of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le cittA invisibili; and the complex network of literary references which marked the reception of Claudio Magris's Danubio in different cultures.

In the new Russia, even dictatorship is a reality show. Professional killers with the souls of artists, would-be theater directors turned Kremlin puppet-masters, suicidal supermodels, Hell's Angels who hallucinate themselves as holy warriors, and oligarch revolutionaries: welcome to the glittering, surreal heart of twenty-first-century Russia. It is a world erupting with new money and new power, changing so fast it breaks all sense of reality, home to a form of dictatorship--far subtler than twentieth-century strains--that is rapidly rising to challenge the West. When British producer Peter Pomerantsev plunges into the booming Russian TV industry, he gains access to every nook and corrupt cranny of the country. He is brought to smoky rooms for meetings with propaganda gurus running the nerve-center of the Russian media machine, and visits Siberian mafia-towns and the salons of the international super-rich in London and the US. As the Putin regime becomes more aggressive, Pomerantsev finds himself drawn further into the system. Dazzling yet piercingly insightful, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible is an unforgettable voyage into a country spinning from decadence into madness.

In 1895/6 the sixty-year-old Mark Twain set off on a worldwide lecture tour to pay off his debts from a publishing company bankruptcy, notes from which a year later became his final travel book Following the Equator. Two years later he wrote, 'How I did loathe that journey around the world! except the sea-part and India.' Although he was only in India for just over two of the twelve months, his exploits and observations there take up forty per cent of the book-and by common consent are by far the best and liveliest part of it. In The Indian Equator the Mark Twain travel trilogist Ian Strathcarron, his wife and photographer Gillian and his factota Sita follow in his mentor's footsteps, train tracks and boat wakes tracing the route that Twain, his wife Livy, his daughter Clara, his manager Smythe and his bearer Satan took as they crisscrossed the sub-continent. Leaving from the Bombay that was and the Mumbai that is, both writers follow the lecture circuit of old India--including what is now Pakistan--across the plains and cities of the north up to the peaks of the Himalayas by way of Baroda, Jaipur, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Benares/Varanasi, Calcutta/Kolkata, Darjeeling, Lahore and Rawalpindi. Staying in the same Raj clubs, travelling down the same train lines, meeting the high and mighty and the downtrodden and destitute, Twain and Strathcarron are absorbed by an India that then was and now is 'not for the faint of heart nor mild of spirit nor weak of mind nor dull of sense nor correct of politic'; a rapidly changing yet still deeply traditional society where 'a few hundred million have grabbed the twenty-first century by the whiskers and many more hundred million still tuck the nineteenth century into bed at night'. Mark Twain loved the India of 1896; like his trilogist, he would love it still.

There are still wild places out there on our crowded planet. Through a series of personal journeys, Dan Richards explores the appeal of far-flung outposts in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans and deserts. Following a route from the Cairngorms of Scotland to the fire-watch lookouts of Washington State; from Iceland's 'Houses of Joy' to the Utah desert; frozen ghost towns in Svalbard to shrines in Japan; Roald Dahl's writing hut to a lighthouse in the North Atlantic, Richards explores landscapes which have inspired writers, artists and musicians, and asks: why are we drawn to wilderness? What can we do to protect them? And what does the future hold for outposts on the edge?

Most travel memoirs involve a button-nosed protagonist nursing a broken heart who, rather than tearfully watching The Princess Bride while eating an entire 5-gallon vat of ice cream directly out of the container (like a normal person), instead decides to travel the world, inevitably falling for some chiseled stranger with bulging pectoral muscles and a disdain for wearing clothing above the waist. This is not that kind of book. Geraldine met the love of her life long before this story began, on a bus in Seattle surrounded by drunk college kids. She gets lost constantly, wherever she goes. And her nose would never, ever be considered "button-like." Hilarious, irreverent and heartfelt, All Over the Place chronicles the five-year period that kicked off when Geraldine got laid off from a job she loved and took off to travel the world. Those years taught her a great number of things, though the ability to read a map was not one of them. She has only a vague idea of where Russia is, but she understands her Russian father now better than ever before. She learned that at least half of what she thought was her mother's functional insanity was actually an equally incurable condition called "being Italian." She learned about unemployment and brain tumors and lost luggage and lost opportunities and just getting lost, in countless terminals and cabs and hotel lobbies across the globe. And she learned what it's like to travel the world with someone you already know and love. How that person can help you make sense of things, and can, by some sort of alchemy, make foreign cities and far-off places feel like home. In All Over the Place, Geraldine imparts the insight she gained while being far from home--wry, surprising, but always sincere, advice about marriage, family, health, and happiness that come from getting lost and finding the unexpected.

The reality of Marseille, with its secret life and scarred beauty, has little in common with its sulphurous reputation. Its inhabitants, who like to keep themselves and their city's true character to themselves, prefer it that way. A taste for independence has been part of the city's nature and history from the beginnings 2,600 years ago; since then it has only been part of France for the past 600, and for much of that time unwillingly. Ringed on three sides by steep hills and by the sea on the fourth, Marseille resembles an island, and soon gives to incoming migrants a Marseillais identity, separating them both from their multiple origins and from the French of the surrounding mainland. Founded as a Greek trading station, the city has traded always, favouring the transit of goods by sea and land over industrialisation; as a result the twentieth-century recession of sea traffic and partial closure of the docks can make Marseille appear neglected, dishevelled, and under-employed as a great port and historical centre. The appearance is deceptive; Marseille is a ceaselessly changing and culturally ever-creative fusion of peoples--rich and poor, black, brown and white, a population, according to the novelist Blaise Cendrars, that remains 'insolent, happy to be alive, and more independent than ever'. The Vieux-Port into which the first Greek settlers rowed their fifty-oared ships is still the vital centre of the city and even if less vibrantly active than in the days of sail, it is here that the sense of the living Marseille can be grasped. Moreover, the Euromediterranee project and the naming of Marseille as cultural capital of Europe in 2013 have together brought in massive capital transfusions to a process of urban rehabilitation which is continuing. David Crackanthorpe explores the striking architecture of Marseille's monuments, the remains of Greek and Roman docks and wall, the islands of the gulf and the magnificent coast, the city's distinctive language, food and popular culture. With all the disfigurements it has suffered, Marseille remains one of the world's most unique cities and its site among the most splendid.

Norman Lewis avoids the easy pleasures of travelling through the hill-forts of Rajasthan, visiting palace hotels and the Taj Mahal. Instead his travels in India begin in the impoverished, overpopulated and corrupt state of Bihar - the scene of a brutal caste war between the untouchables and higher-caste gangsters. From these violent happenings, he heads down the west coast of Bengal and into the highlands of Orissa to testify to the life of the 'indigenous tribals who have survived in isolation. As William Dalrymple observed in The Spectator, 'the great virtue of Norman Lewis as a writer is that he can make the most boring things interesting; whatever he is describing whether it is a rickshaw driver, an alcohol crazed elephant, or a man defecating beside the road Lewis senses are awake for sounds or smells, and he can make you think twice about scenes you have seen ten thousand times before the book is full of some of the strangest facts imaginable ...It is a joy to read. Other Norman Lewis titles published by Eland: Jackdaw Cake, The Missionaries, Voices of the Old Sea, A View of The World, Naples 44, A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth, The Honoured Society, An Empire of the East, In Sicily and The Tomb in Seville.

'Where is this adventure taking us? I now have no fixed address, don't want one, don't need one. We are floating. Nostalgia for home is vamoose. We have tasted the lotus and we are not going back.' It all began at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Station, in 1961. Two young Princetonians have returned to New York from South America, where their dream of buying a coffee plantation in the Peruvian jungle evaporated. With the fire for adventure still burning in their veins, they are tempted by a mysterious letter from Kenya and plan a trip across Africa. They buy a white BMW motorcycle and paint the words 'The White Nile' on the tank, to honour the route they will follow. In limpid, elegant prose John Hopkins describes deadly salt flats where tourists vanish without a trace, mysterious Saharan oases and the funerals of young Tunisians killed by the French Foreign Legion. In Leptus Magna he conjures visions of ancient Rome and visits Homer's fabled island of the Lotus Eaters. They escape armed vigilantes in the Tunisian desert, and are chased by the border patrol across Libyan sands. They climb the Great Pyramid at Giza at dawn, endure 'The Desert Express' across the Nubian desert and travel by paddlewheel steamer through the Sudd, a swamp bigger than Britain. But the final adventure, at the idyllic Impala Farm at the foot of Mount Kenya, turns out to be a poisoned paradise. The White Nile Diaries is a riveting coming-of-age journey, a tantalising glimpse into a time when Africa was an oyster for the young, the brave and the free. The places, the people, the writing, and the emotional reverberations hold the reader enthralled.

This volume offers a reasoned critical account of a wide range of travel writing about rural Ireland. The focus is on work by English travellers who visited Ireland for pleasure, from the 'scenic tourists' of the post-Romantic period to Eric Newby in the 1980s. Ryle also discusses accounts by American and English anthropologists, as well as writing by Irish authors including J.M. Synge, George Moore, Sean O'Faolain and Colm TA(3)ibA n. The materials reviewed and discussed here, including many books which are now difficult to find, offer illuminating and sometimes entertaining evidence about the development of tourism. Ryle also shows how the discourses and practices of pleasurable travel have intersected with and been marked by the dimensions of power and proprietorship, hegemony, and resistance, which have characterised Anglo-Irish and Hiberno-English cultural relations over the last two centuries. Journeys in Ireland will interest all those concerned with the literature and history of those relations, and will be an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers and students concerned with travel writing and tourism with and beyond these islands.