Henry James was a renowned observer of European culture, both in his fiction and in his life. In particular, he loved Italy, visiting it 14 times and setting several of his novels in the country. Between 1873 and 1909 he also wrote numerous essays and travelogues that were ultimately collected into one volume and published as Italian Hours
Mungo Park set off from his home in the Scottish borders in May 1795 at the age of 23 to discover the course of the River Niger in West Africa. When he reappeared in England more than two and a half years later, he had been presumed dead, and the tale of his perilous journey published in 1799 was greeted with great acclaim.
The waters that surround Seychelles are home to over 1,000 species of fish and 300 species of coral. The islands are visited by giant Whale Sharks and manta rays, and are home to the critically endangered Hawksbill and Green Sea Turtles.
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, ......
Robert Louis Stevenson was not only a gifted writer, he was also an indefatigable traveller. His thirst for adventure was formed by his boyhood visits to remote Scottish lighthouses, and he spent much of his life fleeing the rigours of cold climates and social orthodoxy. Along the way he canoed through Belgium and France, booked passage to and ......
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 ......
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, ......
Ambrose Rathborne was an Australian mining engineer who moved first to Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) as a coffee planter, and then in the 1880s to the Malay States, where he worked as a planter and entrepreneur. Camping and Tramping in Malaya: Fifteen Years in the Native States of the Malay Peninsula was first published in 1898, and is a lively ......
Edith Wharton journeyed to Morocco in the final days of the First World War, at a time when there was no guidebook to the country. In Morocco is the classic account of her expedition. A seemingly unlikely chronicler, Wharton, more usually associated with American high society, explored the country for a month by military vehicle. Travelling from ......
