Classical topographer Sir William Gell (1777-1836) first came to public attention with his Topography of Troy (1804). Based on his travels around Bunarbashi, near to where Schliemann would subsequently excavate, the work became a standard treatise. Byron even wrote: 'Of Dardan tours let dilettanti tell, / I leave topography to classic Gell.' A noted conversationalist and intellectual intermediary, Gell became a Fellow of the Royal Society and, indeed, a Member of the Society of Dilettanti. He also served, in 1803, on a diplomatic mission to the Ionian Islands; his subsequent journey, with the archaeologist Edward Dodwell, through the Peloponnese - then known as the Morea - became the subject of several later books, including Narrative of a Journey in the Morea (1823; also reissued in this series) and this 1817 publication. Comprising a survey of routes through the area, and their natural and archaeological landmarks, it sheds light on both contemporary Greece and the practicalities of early topographical study.

Sir John Ross (1777-1856), the distinguished British naval officer and Arctic explorer, undertook three great voyages to the Arctic regions; accounts of his first and his second voyages are also reissued in this series. (During the latter, his ship was stranded in the unexplored area of Prince Regent Inlet, where Ross and his crew survived by living and eating as the local Inuit did.) In this volume, first published in 1855, the explorer describes his experiences during his third (privately funded) Arctic voyage, undertaken in 1850 as part of the effort to locate the missing expedition led by Sir John Franklin, his close friend. Ross also summarises in partisan style the previous efforts by the Royal Navy to find out what happened to the Erebus and Terror, and is scathing in his account of what he regards as the mismanagement and incompetence of the Admiralty.

Berthold Seemann (1825-71), a German-born botanist and traveller, published several scientific books and articles. He also composed music and in the 1860s he wrote three plays which enjoyed some success in Germany. In 1846 Seemann was appointed naturalist to the British ship HMS Herald, which was engaged in a hydrographical survey of the Pacific. In this two-volume work, published in 1853, the author recounts how he joined the Herald in Panama in 1847 and remained on board until 1851. The ship explored almost all of the West Coast of America and also sailed north into the Arctic seas. In Volume 2, the Herald is ordered to the Bering Strait to search for the Arctic explorer John Franklin. New islands are discovered and Seemann collects anthropological data related to the Inuit. The Herald also visits the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) several times, and eventually returns home via the Ascension Island.

Sir Allen Young (1827-1915), merchant navy officer and experienced Polar explorer, took part in several expeditions before that of the Pandora. As navigator he had accompanied the McClintock expedition to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin, during which he explored several hundred miles of new coastline by sledge. He was also in command of the Fox on the 1860 North Atlantic telegraph expedition to assess the practicality of a cable route between Europe and America across the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In 1875, he led, and financed, the British North-West Passage Expedition on the Pandora, and this compelling account of his journey was first published in 1876. In it, he records his attempt to reach the magnetic pole via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and to navigate the North-West Passage in one season, though he failed in this attempt because of heavy ice in the Franklin Strait.

Charles Hall (1821-71) was neither seaman nor navigator, but by 1871 he had made two Arctic expeditions as a result of his fascination with the failed expedition of Franklin. With a grant from Congress, his Polaris voyage aimed to be the first U.S. expedition to the North Pole. Desertion, drunkenness, and disagreements beset the venture from the start, and by the time Hall reached the furthest northern point yet attained by an Arctic explorer, crew discipline had broken down completely. Using official papers and crew journals, this 1876 work by C. H. Davis for the U.S. Navy recounts Hall's sudden death (after accusing his crew of poisoning him), the failed attempt to reach the Pole, and the abandonment of half the crew left drifting for 2500 kilometres on an ice floe. With the mystery of Hall's death and the story of the crew's survival, this is an epic tale of human endurance.

The most renowned naval officer of the mid-nineteenth century, Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald (1775-1860), served in wars against Spain and France, retiring as an admiral in the Royal Navy. He was also an M.P., vociferously calling for naval reform in Parliament. Due to a financial scandal, he left the Royal Navy for a period and became a celebrated mercenary, commanding naval forces in the wars of independence of Chile, Peru, Brazil and Greece. First published in 1851, this work contains notes on a voyage of 1849 around the West Indies and North America. Describing the peoples and geography encountered, it offers progressive remarks on the end of slavery, criticisms of plantation owners, and suggestions for commercial improvements. The book remains of enduring interest to scholars of naval, colonial and Caribbean history.

Alone, months of sailing separating them from home, in the polar winter where the sun never rises, the two ships of Captain William Parry's expedition lay encased in ice from November 1819 to March 1820. In order to fully chart the North-West Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific, it was necessary to overwinter in the Arctic, something that no other British expedition had done before. To boost morale in these uncomfortable circumstances, Captain Edward Sabine (1788-1883), a senior scientist carrying out measurements of natural phenomena, founded and edited a weekly magazine, which ran for twenty-one issues and was made available to the wider world in 1821. Offering jokes, poems, stories and thinly disguised gossip, the members of the expedition contributed to the magazine with enthusiasm (after having first thawed their ink). This little book offers unique insight into what polar exploration in the nineteenth century was actually like.

In this study, Hamish Forbes explores how Greek villagers have understood and reacted to their landscapes over the centuries, from the late medieval period to the present. Analyzing how they have seen themselves belonging to their local communities and within both local and wider landscapes, Forbes examines how these aspects of belonging have informed each other. Forbes also illuminates cross-disciplinary interests in memory and the importance of monuments. Based on data gathered over 25 years, Forbes' study combines the rich detail of ethnographic field work with historical and archaeological time-depth, showing how landscapes have important meaning beyond the religious sphere in terms of kinship, ideas about the past, and in their role as productive assets.

Explorer and naturalist Thomas Thomson (1817 78) led an intrepid life. He started his career as an assistant surgeon with the East India Company and soon became a curator of the Asiatic Society's museum in Bengal. He was sent to Afghanistan in 1840 during the First Anglo-Afghan War, and was captured but managed to escape as he was about to be sold as a slave. Undaunted by this misfortune, he accepted a perilous mission to define the boundary between Kashmir and Chinese Tibet in 1847. During his eighteen-month journey, Thomson explored the Kashmir territories and went as far north as the barren Karakoram Pass. He collected valuable geographical and geological information as well as a wealth of botanical specimens. He describes his findings in minute detail in this account, first published in 1852. Thomson later became a Fellow of the Linnean Society, the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society.

Lady Isabel Burton (1831 96) was a distinguished nineteenth-century traveller, writer and critic. She and her husband Richard explored the Middle East, India, Africa and South America extensively during his diplomatic placements and for their own pleasure. Individually and collaboratively they produced several exquisitely detailed travelogues, recording custom, culture, politics and geography. This account of their travels, first published in 1879, details the Burtons' leisurely route to India through Europe before crossing the Mediterranean and continuing south through Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. This skilful and humorous narrative brings the places and people to life through personal anecdotes, observations and colourful description. Burton's political and historical comments on the lands she travels through are reasoned, well-researched and afford valuable insight into public opinion and world affairs at this time.

British naval officer James Colnett (1753-1806) served on many voyages during his career. He was a midshipman on Captain Cook's second voyage, and in 1774, he was first to sight New Caledonia, which led to Cook naming Cape Colnett after him. Later in his career, he was in command of the fur-trading expedition that resulted in the Nootka Crisis and near-war between Spain and England. In this book, first published in 1798, Colnett gives an account of the voyage he commanded to the Antarctic in 1793. The expedition's success at charting suitable places for ships to anchor was instrumental to the development of the whaling industry in the area. This book contains accounts and maps of the islands and coastlands visited during the expedition. Among the islands visited were the Galapagos Islands, and Charles Darwin is known to have had a copy of this book on HMS Beagle.

Elisha Kane (1820-57) was a famous US Arctic explorer who fell in love with the well-known New York spiritualist Margaret Fox (1836-93). When their secret engagement was revealed, it caused much controversy and Fox was later accused of fabricating their subsequent marriage. She wanted to publish their correspondence in 1862 to clear her name, but Kane's family - who disapproved of Fox and did not believe the couple ever married - halted the book's publication and they reached a settlement. When they failed to make agreed payments to Fox, she decided to publish the letters in 1866. The subsequent volume charts the couple's courtship from its beginnings in 1852 until Kane's death, and reveals the ups and downs of their tumultuous relationship, especially Kane's desire for Fox to stop her spiritualist practices. It presents an intimate account of the romance between two prominent nineteenth-century public figures.

After sailing on a crowded steamer from Marseilles, Henry Baker Tristram (1822 1906) arrived in Algiers in the winter of 1856, and began preparations for an expedition into the Sahara. Although the northern areas had been well documented by the occupying French forces, the south was little travelled by Europeans. A keen naturalist and later a Fellow of the Linnaean Society, Tristram made meticulous preparations for collecting specimens, and kept a thorough journal as he travelled. This book, one of the first English reports of the South Sahara, published in 1860, is an almost exact transcription of that journal. Travelling with a tin of chocolate and a collection of fine silk handkerchiefs to trade, Tristram made notes on a host of topics, from the flight of flamingos to the government and customs of the native Touareg. His account is still a valuable resource for students of the history of science.

In 1816, an expedition to Africa, commanded by Captain James Tuckey (1776-1816), set out on HMS Congo, accompanied by the storeship Dorothy. The aim was to discover more about African geography - of which relatively little was then known - and in particular the connection between the River Congo, also known as the Zaire, and the Niger Basin. The mission failed when eighteen crew members, including Tuckey, died from virulent fevers and attacks by hostile natives. However, the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty gave permission for publication of Tuckey's notes, and those of his Norwegian botanist Christen Smith (1785-1816), who also died during the voyage. First published in 1818, the work comprises their narratives of the doomed expedition. At the time it aroused Western interest in Africa, encouraging further research, and it remains of interest to geographers, botanists and scholars of African studies today.

George W. De Long (1844-81) was a US Navy officer who set out to find a new route to the North Pole via the Bering Strait. During his voyage, which left San Francisco in 1879, he claimed the De Long Islands for the USA. But when his vessel, the Jeannette, sank, the crew abandoned ship, and he eventually died of starvation in Siberia. Compiled by his wife from his journals and the testimony of the survivors, these two volumes document De Long's doomed expedition. First published in 1883, Volume 2 records the Jeannette's final wreckage, and the crew's continuation of their perilous mission in smaller boats. It concludes with the discovery of De Long's records, and later his remains, by surviving crew member George Melville. Providing a vivid account of nineteenth-century Polar exploration, it remains of great interest to scholars of geography and maritime studies.

The 1839-43 Antarctic expedition was primarily a scientific voyage. James Clark Ross, a member of the expedition that had located the Magnetic North Pole in 1831, was the natural choice to lead this mission to find the Magnetic South Pole. Although he was unsuccessful in this aim, he charted the coastline of most of the continent, collected valuable scientific data and made several important discoveries. Published in 1840, these papers were prepared by the Royal Society for the expedition and give detailed instructions on how to make the important magnetic and meteorological observations. There are further instructions, such as how to preserve animal specimens, and surprisingly a request to investigate the reasons for the poor cultivation of vines at the Cape of Good Hope as 'the bad quality of Cape wine ... is well known'. These papers reveal the expectations and demands placed upon this expedition.

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, with J. C. Ross discovering the magnetic north pole. Ross published this two-volume work in 1835. Volume 1 summarises previous Polar exploration before describing the voyage in great detail, from preparations to the return in 1833.

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, with J. C. Ross discovering the magnetic pole. Ross published this two-volume work in 1835. Volume 2 contains scientific reports, ethnological information on the Inuit, an Eskimo vocabulary, and comments on natural history.

The Finnish geologist and Arctic explorer A. E. Nordenskioeld (1832-1901) spent much of his life in exile in Sweden, where he was made a baron. He served as Superintendent of the Mineralogical Department of the Swedish Royal Museum, and later became a Member of the Swedish Academy. Following a number of expeditions during the 1860s, he concluded that the North Pole could not be reached by ship, and in 1872 he tried unsuccessfully to reach it overland. A great historian of cartography, he amassed a huge collection of maps, now included in UNESCO's 'Memory of the World' Register. This two-volume work, published in Swedish in 1881, describes his most famous voyage, the first crossing of the North-East Passage. Volume 1 includes details of the flora, fauna, people and geology encountered on the journey from Tromso to the Bering Strait, along with a review of previous exploration in the region.

The Finnish geologist and Arctic explorer A. E. Nordenskioeld (1832-1901) spent much of his life in exile in Sweden, where he was made a baron. He served as Superintendent of the Mineralogical Department of the Swedish Royal Museum, and later became a Member of the Swedish Academy. Following a number of expeditions during the 1860s, he concluded that the North Pole could not be reached by ship, and in 1872 he tried unsuccessfully to reach it overland. A great historian of cartography, he amassed a huge collection of maps, now included in UNESCO's 'Memory of the World' Register. This two-volume work, published in Swedish in 1881, describes his most famous voyage, the first crossing of the North-East Passage. Volume 2 follows the expedition from the Bering Strait to Yokohama in Japan, and the return journey to Sweden, through the India Ocean, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, in 1879.

The Open Polar Sea was one of the most prevalent myths of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration. Several explorers had hypothesised a stretch of ice-free sea between Greenland and the North Pole, and several expeditions set out in search of it. One of these was planned and led by Isaac Israel Hayes (1832-81), an American physician and explorer. This account of the expedition, first published in 1866, was compiled from his journals. Having left Boston in a small schooner so overloaded with equipment that a passenger could lean over the deck rail and touch the sea, Hayes and his crew almost faced shipwreck off Nova Scotia and regularly saw their cabins flooded on their way to Greenland, where, in calmer weather, they encountered the first palatial ice floes. Written for the general reader rather than for scientific purposes, this book still serves as an accessible, entertaining guide to the voyage.

Sir Allen Young (1827-1915), was a merchant navy officer and experienced polar explorer. He took part in several expeditions before those of the Pandora including as navigator to McClintock on the Fox to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin. He was also in command of the Fox on the 1860 North Atlantic Telegraph Expedition to assess the practicality of a cable route between Europe and America across the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In 1875 and 1876 he led two expeditions in the Canadian Arctic on the steam yacht Pandora. The first, the British North-West Passage Expedition, was an attempt to reach the magnetic pole via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and to navigate the North-West Passage in one season. The second was a further attempt on the North-West Passage, but also to deliver dispatches to George Nares' Arctic expedition. These compelling accounts were first published together in 1879.

Clergyman and ornithologist H. B. Tristram (1822-1906), was an early supporter of Darwin's evolutionary theories - in his 1859 paper 'On the Ornithology of North Africa' - who became both a Fellow of the Royal Society and canon residentiary of Durham; he was also the Church Missionary Society's representative in the county for forty years. This 1895 volume, the last of many travel narratives he published, is an account of a sojourn in Japan, visiting his daughter Katherine, then headmistress of the Society's school for girls in Osaka. As well as describing the country's minority Christian communities, Tristram's highly readable narrative covers Japanese customs, industries, shrines and ornithology, with excursus on both native wild birds and local practices for taming them. It illustrates the author's ongoing interest in both religion and the natural sciences, as well as illuminating cultural contact between Britain and Japan in this formative period.

Scottish artist W. G. Burn Murdoch (1862-1939) joined a whaling expedition to Antarctica that left Dundee in 1892. He was on board the barque Balaena, the largest of the ships in the group, and under the command of Captain Fairweather. They were searching for the valuable Bowhead whale, which had been sighted on Ross' 1839-43 Antarctic expedition. Although unsuccessful at achieving this aim, the ships returned in 1893 loaded with seal pelts. First published in 1894, this is Murdoch's account of the expedition, illustrated throughout with his sketches. He documents each stage of the voyage, and describes living conditions on the Balaena. His illustrations include scenes such as the Ship's departure and ice landscapes, as well as focusing on the daily work of the crew. The Ship's naturalist, William S. Bruce (1867-1921), wrote the final chapter, focusing on the scientific observations he made during the voyage.

For a British Empire that stretched across much of the globe at the start of the nineteenth century, the interiors of Africa and Australia remained intriguing mysteries. The challenge of opening these continents to imperial influence fell to a proto-professional coterie of determined explorers. They sought knowledge, adventure, and fame, but often experienced confusion, fear, and failure. The Last Blank Spaces follows the arc of these explorations, from idea to practice, from intention to outcome, from myth to reality. Those who conducted the hundreds of expeditions that probed Africa and Australia in the nineteenth century adopted a mode of scientific investigation that had been developed by previous generations of seaborne explorers. They likened the two continents to oceans, empty spaces that could be made truly knowable only by mapping, measuring, observing, and preserving. They found, however, that their survival and success depended less on this system of universal knowledge than it did on the local knowledge possessed by native peoples. While explorers sought to advance the interests of Britain and its emigrant communities, Dane Kennedy discovers a more complex outcome: expeditions that failed ignominiously, explorers whose loyalties proved ambivalent or divided, and, above all, local states and peoples who diverted expeditions to serve their own purposes. The collisions, and occasional convergences, between British and indigenous values, interests, and modes of knowing the world are brought to the fore in this fresh and engaging study.