San Antonio College Library

On the great Pacific discovery expeditions of the "long eighteenth century", naturalists for the first time were commonly found aboard ships sailing forth from European ports. Lured by intoxicating opportunities to discover exotic and perhaps lucrative flora and fauna unknown at home, these men set out eagerly to collect and catalogue, study and document an uncharted natural world. This enthralling book is the first to describe the adventures and...

No previous generation has ever travelled so energetically or so obsessively as ours, nor has travel writing ever been so much in fashion as it is now. But behind the self-conscious literary artistry of today's narratives there lies a rich and fascinating history of travel writing, stretching back over several thousand years. Travel writing has emerged from migration, war, exploration, trade, conquest, pilgrimage, science, and poetic longing. But...

"Critics have long struggled to find a suitable category for travelogues. From its ancient origins to the present day, the travel narrative has borrowed elements from various genres - from epic poetry to literary reportage - in order to evoke distant cultures and exotic locales, and sometimes those closer to hand. Tim Youngs argues in this lucid and detailed Introduction that travel writing redefines the myriad genres it comprises and is best understood...

"Women's travel narratives of early America recorded journeys north and south along the eastern seaboard and west onto the Ohio frontier. In the women's keen observations and entertaining wit, readers will find bravado mixed with hesitation as women set forth on business, to relocate, and for pleasure. These travelers wrote compellingly of crossing rivers and mountains, facing hunger, encountering native Americans, sleeping in taverns, and confronting...

This book explores the cultural needs that tourism fulfilled in 19th century America by examining the new nation's most important tourist attractions, such as Niagara Falls, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Mammoth Cave, and Yosemite.

Called a "man of genius" by his close friend Thomas Jefferson, John Ledyard lived, by any standard, a remarkable life. In his thirty-eight years, he accompanied Captain Cook on his last voyage; befriended Jefferson, Lafayette, and Tom Paine in Paris; was the first American citizen to see Alaska, Hawaii, and the west coast of America; and set out to find the source of the Niger by traveling from Cairo across the Sahara. His greatest dream, concocted...

As the first extensive survey of contemporary travel writing, Tourists with Typewriters offers a series of challenging and provocative critical insights into a wide range of travel narratives written in English after the Second World War. The book focuses in particular on contemporary travel writers such as Jan Morris, Peter Matthiessen, V.S. Naipaul, Barry Lopez, Mary Morris, Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle, and the late Bruce Chatwin. It examines some...

"There are many Stevensons behind the initials RLS, but the one that has endeared him to so many readers for so long is surely the fighter, battling to stay alive. Jorge Luis Borges described Stevenson's brief life as courageous and heroic. In Philip Callow's new biography, one can see why." "Doctors, called repeatedly to what should have been his deathbed, would find a scarecrow, twitching and alive. A sickly child, Louis became in turn a bohemian...

Drawing on journals, letters, and diaries, the author presents a portrait of the life and times of eighteenth-century women who broke the constraints of a male-dominated society and embarked on an odyssey of self-discovery.