Ernest Shackleton sailed to the South Pole as the First World War broke out in Europe, intent on making the first ever trans-Antarctic crossing. South! is Shackletons first-hand account of the epic expedition, which he described as the last great journey on earth. During the journey their ship, the Endurance, became trapped by ice and was crushed, ......
Joshua Slocum spent a lifetime at sea. He ran away from his Nova Scotia home at the age of 14 and for the next 35 years he sailed the world holding every shipboard rank. When a ship under his command was wrecked on the coast of Brazil in 1887, it seemed that his maritime career had ended in disgrace. Not one for retiring to earthly pastures, ......
Few thought of travelling to the Alps until John Ruskin extolled their rugged beauty in 1842. More than anyone, it was 25-year-old Edward Whymper who imbued them once again with a sense of alarming mystery after his Alpine memoir and first ascent of the Matterhorn.
A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, gives a fascinating description of life in the untamed Colorado Territory at a time when it was only notionally under the control of the American authorities, having been brutally seized from the Indians. Her intrepid journeys through remote areas are relayed in the form of fluent, achingly beautiful.
Alfred Russel Wallaces The Malay Archipelago is a work of astounding breadth and originality that chronicles the British naturalists scientific exploration of Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and New Guinea between 1854 and 1862. An intrepid explorer who earned his living by collecting bird skins, Wallace also catalogued the vast number of plant and ......
The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic Mission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. In this colorful documentary from the ......
Travels in Egypt and Nubia is the travel journal of Giovanni Belzoni, and tells the story of three journeys made between 1815 and 1819, describing magical monuments, such as the temple at Abu Simbel, the pyramid at Khafre and the tomb of Seti I.
Isabella Bird, an Englishwoman whose extensive travels and writings earned her the first female membership of the Royal Geographical Society, visited Malaya, Singapore, Indo-China and Hong Kong in 1879.
The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the establishment of a substantial network of maritime trade across the Indian Ocean, providing the real-life background to the Sinbad tales. An exceptional exemplar of Arabic travel writing, Accounts of China and India is a compilation of reports and anecdotes about the lands and peoples of this diverse ......
