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A Book of Traveller's Tales
Featuring Henry James on the Epsom Derby, Cecil Beaton on an evening with the Rolling Stones in Marrakesh, and Hannibal on crossing the Alps, this anthology offers more than three hundred travel pieces dating from 430 B.C. to the 1980s
- GenresTravelNonfictionHistory
576 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1985
About the author
Eric Newby
42 books174 followersGeorge Eric Newby CBE MC (December 6, 1919 – October 20, 2006) was an English author of travel literature.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
Newby was born and grew up near Hammersmith Bridge, London, and was educated at St Paul's School. His father was a partner in a firm of wholesale dressmakers but he also harboured dreams of escape, running away to sea as a child before being captured at Millwall. Owing to his father's frequent financial crises and his own failure to pass algebra, Newby was taken away from school at sixteen and put to work as an office boy in the Dorland advertising agency on Regent Street, where he spent most of his time cycling around the office admiring the typists' legs. Fortunately, the agency lost the Kellogg's account and he apprenticed aboard the Finnish windjammer Moshulu in 1938, sailing in what Newby entitled The Last Grain Race (1956) from Europe to Australia and back by way of Cape Horn (his journey was also pictorially documented in Learning the Ropes). In fact, two more grain races followed the 1939 race in which Newby participated, with the last race being held in 1949.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
March 28, 2021
A well put together chronology of travel writing with the first chapter being called Advice on Travelling. This follows with a chapter each on Africa, Europe, Great Britain and Ireland, Near Asia, Middle Asia, Far Asia, North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean, Australia and New Zealand and finally The Artic and The Antarctic.
The changes in advice to travellers when comparing this day and age is obviously going to leave one shaking their head or laughing at the sheer strangeness of advice from the past. We get the likes of Samuel Johnson telling us that “…travel has its advantages…” but he complained about books on travel and then travel itself as it “……will end likewise in disappointment…”
Prince Herman Puckler-Muskau told us that people of Naples were to be treated “brutally”. W B Lord and Thomas Baines gave advice as to dying of thirst in the desert. John Hatt on farting!
On Africa Suetonius Paulinus was an early writer as he was the first Roman General to advance some miles past the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Battuta, is well worth reading and not just for his contribution here. I recall him being quoted in other books I have read. In this compendium he tells of being protected from a crocodile by one local and also the difficulty of purchasing a female slave. English adventurer Andrew Battel alone is worth a read about such were his life adventures. Some names I recognised from my school days, Mungo Park and David Livingstone to name but a couple. We get wit shining through from a night with a Boer Meester via a certain William J. Burchell. Alexander Kinglake tells of Cairo and the plague in 1835. Not much changes when it comes to our world and pandemics through the age. Richard Lemon Lander tells of his ordeal by poison that had a wow effect on this reader. Later Sir Cecil Beaton meets the Rolling Stones in Marrakesh. I laughed out loud at him describing Jagger having “…hangers-ons, chauffeurs and Americans” A bit of British upper middle class snobbery coming to the fore.
Europe was mostly covered by English writers. George Turbeville wrote a poem about the Ruses and Giles Fletcher about their baths. Thomas Coryate is worth reading about such was his life’s adventures. He was quite the celebrity in his day. John Evelyn, the other diarist, wrote of galleys in Marseilles and Thomas Gray wrote some nonsense about the “littleness” of Versailles! There is more to Edward Gibbon than the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Arthur Young wrote on French cooking. William Beckford’s life is worth a read let alone his contribution to this compeduim. I enjoyed Shelly and his writing of Rome and Astolphe was a French writer who travelled to and wrote about Russia where we should “inspect nothing without a guide”. Robert Curzon wrote of Mount Athos and the “tomecide” that occurred in the monastery. As we get closer to our era Norman Douglas tells of the women of San Giovanni and Cecil Beaton appears again in Budapest. Lawrence Durrell and the superb Patrick Leigh Fermor also get to tell a tale.
Great Britain and Ireland begins with Greek navigator Pytheas around the isles 300 odd years BC. Strabo, another Greek writes of Ireland in the time of Christ. Dutch merchant Emanuel Van Meteren is not that impressed with the English in about 1575 as they are “…weak and tender…” and are also “…suspicious of foreigners, whom they despise.” Fynes Moryson an English traveller in Ireland circa 1600 thought the Irish drunks. Cesar De Saussure thinks the English a danger to foreigners during Lord Mayor’s Day celebration’s calling the revellers “insolent and Rowdy” and calling them the most “cursed brood in existence” with all those thought foreign called “French Dogs” no matter where they were from. German traveller Carl Phillip Moitz thought his coach ride in 1782 from Leicester to Northampton as something he would never forget as it seemed a prospect of certain death. William Cobbett in 1821 called Cricklade in Wiltshire a “villainous hole” such did he dislike the rural poor of that village. French soldier and politician, François de La Rochefoucauld, on the other hand spent a day in an English country house in the late 1700’s happy with his time with the upper classes though did comment that “very often I have heard things mentioned in good society which would be in the grossest taste in France”.
Near Asia starts with Greek historian, Xenophon, discussing “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” approximately 350 years BC. Saints Paul and Willibald get to write about their travels. Italian Ludovico Di Varthema writes on the Mamelukes love life in the early 1500’s. Sir Richard Francis Burton in July 1853 had himself circumcised so as to cross the Arabian Peninsula and set of for Mecca. Edward Granville Browne had problems with local dialect in 1888 while traveling in Persia.
T. E Lawrence tells of the streets of Jeddah and Evelyn Waugh the problems with boy scouting in Aden. Geoffrey Bibby writes of Dilmun archaeology with the Sheik of Bahrain in 1954.
Middle Asia starts with Alexander the Great not knowing when to stop. Oderic of Pordenone, an Italian friar, tells of Tibet in the late 1200’s. No book of this type could leave out a few words from Marco Polo nor should it leave out the remarkable Ibn Battuta, that amazing Arab traveller from the 1300’s, who I really should read further. The previously mentioned Thomas Coryate tells of spending only a “pennie sterling a day” on his travels “betwixt Jerusalem and this Moguls’ Court” and Edward Terry tells of Coryates eventual death. Evariste Regis Huc, a French Lazarist missionary, tells of the first Kalon in Lhassa looking at a flea under a microscope in 1846. Hungarian Arminius Vambery tells of the terrifying Kara Kum, the black sands, on his way to Khiva. English soldier Frederick Burnaby caused shock in Khiva when he mentioned he was not married. Sir George Scott Robinson writes of his visit in 1890 visit to Kafirstan where he thought the women immoral. Sven Hedin, a Swedish Geographer, tells of his crossing of the Takla Makan desert and the hardships than came from that journey. Compendium complier Eric Newby throws in one of his own tales and US former Korean War veteran tells a fun tale of contraceptives on a Pan AM flight leaving Bangkok to Bengal.
Far Asia begins with Fa-Hsien, a Chinese Buddhist monk who was an early Chinese traveller and he is followed about 300 years later by compatriot Hsuan-Tsang. Flemish monk William of Rubruck tells of an audience with Mangu Khan in 1254 and after we get the more noted Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta reappears with the telling of a meeting with the Sultan of Mul-Jawa where he witnesses a slave kills himself by decapitation as a declaration of love to the Sultan. The Sultan was present and with that Ibn Battuta writes that he “withdrew from the audience.” Italian traveller tells of the eating of human flesh on Java. Engelbert Kaempfer, a German doctor tells of the poisonous Blower fish when he made visit to Japan in the 1690’s. Russian explorer Nikolao Mikailovich Prejevalsky feels the cold nights on the Mongolian Plateau. Englishman Sir Osbert Sitwell made visit to Angkor Thom in 1937. US traveller Oliver Statler tells of dinner at the twenty fifth temple while visiting Japan in the 1970’s.
North America starts with Leif Ericsson the Norseman who was the first known European to go to the northern continent. Columbus and Da Verrazano are the other early travellers that get included. Jacques Cartier in the 1530’s described his outrage that the Hurons having religious beliefs that he did not. Petro De Castaneda, a Spanish Conquistador, describes seeing a bison for the first time. English navigator Philip Amadas describes Virginia, John White tells of the lost colony of Roanoke while Claude Jean Allouez, a French Jesuit Missionary, paddled into Ottawa. Later Mederic Saint-Mery has views on American women of the late 1790’s. Pretty with eyes that are alive but wan complexions and bad teeth. Lewis and Clark get included as does Frances Trollope who describes slavery in the southern states. We also get some writing from John Charles Fremont about the Rockies, G D Warburton on St Johns being the fishiest capital in the world and Henry David Thoreau on camping in the Maine Woods. US Rancher Bruce Siberts writes of Fort Pierre in South Dakota having only “a few good people”…”…some argued 15 or 18, but others said the estimate was too high.” Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance describes meeting white man. US hobo Hood River Blackie, aka Ralph Gooding, made good reading about Running Away in 1940.
Central and South America starts with Amerigo Vespucci as he describes his encounters with the locals in Mexico who are “neither Moors nor Jews” and “…..their living is very barbarous, because they do not eat at fixed times,…”. Magellan and Castillo describe the early European exploration of the southern continent. Hans Stade of Hesse, a German sailor, describes his suffering when captured by the Tupinamba people of Brazil in 1547. The English via Chaplain to Drake, Francis Fletcher, along with Walter Raleigh and John Chilton give us details of their adventures with Miles Phillips telling of the cruel judgement of the Inquisition in 1574. Naturalists such as Alexander Von Humbolt and Charles Waterton, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates describe everything from mosquitoes to earthquakes. English traveller Henry Nelson Coleridge describes his time in the West Indies trying to cure his rheumatism. US ship officer Ellery Scott witnesses the eruption of Mount Pelee while Aldous Huxley is disappointed in a pitch lake in Trinidad. Patrick Leigh Fermor reappears through this time in Guadeloupe.
Australia and New Zealand starts off with early Dutch navigator Jan Carstenzoon describing aboriginal encounters in 1623 and compatriot Abel Tasman in 1642 with his report on Tasmania. The English follow with Dampier and Cook. Russian navigator Fabian Gottlieb Von Bellingshausen describes the sober nature of Maoris in New Zealand. Exploration of the Australian interior by Charles Sturt and Peter Warburton makes for interesting reading as does Anthony Trollope’s observations on the Australian “….sense of inferiority complex..” during his visit in 1871. Earnest Giles describes his issues with thirst while in the Gibson Desert while across the pond Samuel Butler claimed that “no one can mistake…” Mount Cook. I agree with him there! D H Lawrence describes Australia as “…a weird place.” But “…you get used to it.”
The Artic begins with Christopher Hall in 1576 giving an early view of Frobisher Bay and its inhabitants. Henry Morgan describes football with those inhabitants in 1586! Sir John Franklin is the first of many to describe hunger while exploring while Swedish explorer Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjold spends time with the Chukchis in north eastern Siberia and notes the “fearful stench” as the locals “obeyed the calls of nature within the bedchamber”. Robert Edwin Peary describes his reaching of the North Pole. Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen explains his joy at meeting Frederick Jackson’s parallel expedition in Franz Joseph Land. Canadian Vilhjamur Stefannsson writes of his love of his dogs and that to eat them “…would be but a step removed from cannibalism”
The Antarctic has US naval officer Charles Wilkes describing icebergs off Oates Land in 1840 while Norwegian Henrick Johan Bull, thought to be the first man to step onto the continent in 1895 calls it a “...strange and pleasurable…” place. Robert Falcon Scott on the other hand describes it as “awful” while Roald Amundsen is the first man to reach the South Pole. Great explorers of the region represented include Earnest Shackleton, Douglas Mawson and Richard Evelyn Byrd.
See comments for more.
The changes in advice to travellers when comparing this day and age is obviously going to leave one shaking their head or laughing at the sheer strangeness of advice from the past. We get the likes of Samuel Johnson telling us that “…travel has its advantages…” but he complained about books on travel and then travel itself as it “……will end likewise in disappointment…”
Prince Herman Puckler-Muskau told us that people of Naples were to be treated “brutally”. W B Lord and Thomas Baines gave advice as to dying of thirst in the desert. John Hatt on farting!
On Africa Suetonius Paulinus was an early writer as he was the first Roman General to advance some miles past the Atlas Mountains. Ibn Battuta, is well worth reading and not just for his contribution here. I recall him being quoted in other books I have read. In this compendium he tells of being protected from a crocodile by one local and also the difficulty of purchasing a female slave. English adventurer Andrew Battel alone is worth a read about such were his life adventures. Some names I recognised from my school days, Mungo Park and David Livingstone to name but a couple. We get wit shining through from a night with a Boer Meester via a certain William J. Burchell. Alexander Kinglake tells of Cairo and the plague in 1835. Not much changes when it comes to our world and pandemics through the age. Richard Lemon Lander tells of his ordeal by poison that had a wow effect on this reader. Later Sir Cecil Beaton meets the Rolling Stones in Marrakesh. I laughed out loud at him describing Jagger having “…hangers-ons, chauffeurs and Americans” A bit of British upper middle class snobbery coming to the fore.
Europe was mostly covered by English writers. George Turbeville wrote a poem about the Ruses and Giles Fletcher about their baths. Thomas Coryate is worth reading about such was his life’s adventures. He was quite the celebrity in his day. John Evelyn, the other diarist, wrote of galleys in Marseilles and Thomas Gray wrote some nonsense about the “littleness” of Versailles! There is more to Edward Gibbon than the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Arthur Young wrote on French cooking. William Beckford’s life is worth a read let alone his contribution to this compeduim. I enjoyed Shelly and his writing of Rome and Astolphe was a French writer who travelled to and wrote about Russia where we should “inspect nothing without a guide”. Robert Curzon wrote of Mount Athos and the “tomecide” that occurred in the monastery. As we get closer to our era Norman Douglas tells of the women of San Giovanni and Cecil Beaton appears again in Budapest. Lawrence Durrell and the superb Patrick Leigh Fermor also get to tell a tale.
Great Britain and Ireland begins with Greek navigator Pytheas around the isles 300 odd years BC. Strabo, another Greek writes of Ireland in the time of Christ. Dutch merchant Emanuel Van Meteren is not that impressed with the English in about 1575 as they are “…weak and tender…” and are also “…suspicious of foreigners, whom they despise.” Fynes Moryson an English traveller in Ireland circa 1600 thought the Irish drunks. Cesar De Saussure thinks the English a danger to foreigners during Lord Mayor’s Day celebration’s calling the revellers “insolent and Rowdy” and calling them the most “cursed brood in existence” with all those thought foreign called “French Dogs” no matter where they were from. German traveller Carl Phillip Moitz thought his coach ride in 1782 from Leicester to Northampton as something he would never forget as it seemed a prospect of certain death. William Cobbett in 1821 called Cricklade in Wiltshire a “villainous hole” such did he dislike the rural poor of that village. French soldier and politician, François de La Rochefoucauld, on the other hand spent a day in an English country house in the late 1700’s happy with his time with the upper classes though did comment that “very often I have heard things mentioned in good society which would be in the grossest taste in France”.
Near Asia starts with Greek historian, Xenophon, discussing “The Retreat of the Ten Thousand” approximately 350 years BC. Saints Paul and Willibald get to write about their travels. Italian Ludovico Di Varthema writes on the Mamelukes love life in the early 1500’s. Sir Richard Francis Burton in July 1853 had himself circumcised so as to cross the Arabian Peninsula and set of for Mecca. Edward Granville Browne had problems with local dialect in 1888 while traveling in Persia.
T. E Lawrence tells of the streets of Jeddah and Evelyn Waugh the problems with boy scouting in Aden. Geoffrey Bibby writes of Dilmun archaeology with the Sheik of Bahrain in 1954.
Middle Asia starts with Alexander the Great not knowing when to stop. Oderic of Pordenone, an Italian friar, tells of Tibet in the late 1200’s. No book of this type could leave out a few words from Marco Polo nor should it leave out the remarkable Ibn Battuta, that amazing Arab traveller from the 1300’s, who I really should read further. The previously mentioned Thomas Coryate tells of spending only a “pennie sterling a day” on his travels “betwixt Jerusalem and this Moguls’ Court” and Edward Terry tells of Coryates eventual death. Evariste Regis Huc, a French Lazarist missionary, tells of the first Kalon in Lhassa looking at a flea under a microscope in 1846. Hungarian Arminius Vambery tells of the terrifying Kara Kum, the black sands, on his way to Khiva. English soldier Frederick Burnaby caused shock in Khiva when he mentioned he was not married. Sir George Scott Robinson writes of his visit in 1890 visit to Kafirstan where he thought the women immoral. Sven Hedin, a Swedish Geographer, tells of his crossing of the Takla Makan desert and the hardships than came from that journey. Compendium complier Eric Newby throws in one of his own tales and US former Korean War veteran tells a fun tale of contraceptives on a Pan AM flight leaving Bangkok to Bengal.
Far Asia begins with Fa-Hsien, a Chinese Buddhist monk who was an early Chinese traveller and he is followed about 300 years later by compatriot Hsuan-Tsang. Flemish monk William of Rubruck tells of an audience with Mangu Khan in 1254 and after we get the more noted Marco Polo. Ibn Battuta reappears with the telling of a meeting with the Sultan of Mul-Jawa where he witnesses a slave kills himself by decapitation as a declaration of love to the Sultan. The Sultan was present and with that Ibn Battuta writes that he “withdrew from the audience.” Italian traveller tells of the eating of human flesh on Java. Engelbert Kaempfer, a German doctor tells of the poisonous Blower fish when he made visit to Japan in the 1690’s. Russian explorer Nikolao Mikailovich Prejevalsky feels the cold nights on the Mongolian Plateau. Englishman Sir Osbert Sitwell made visit to Angkor Thom in 1937. US traveller Oliver Statler tells of dinner at the twenty fifth temple while visiting Japan in the 1970’s.
North America starts with Leif Ericsson the Norseman who was the first known European to go to the northern continent. Columbus and Da Verrazano are the other early travellers that get included. Jacques Cartier in the 1530’s described his outrage that the Hurons having religious beliefs that he did not. Petro De Castaneda, a Spanish Conquistador, describes seeing a bison for the first time. English navigator Philip Amadas describes Virginia, John White tells of the lost colony of Roanoke while Claude Jean Allouez, a French Jesuit Missionary, paddled into Ottawa. Later Mederic Saint-Mery has views on American women of the late 1790’s. Pretty with eyes that are alive but wan complexions and bad teeth. Lewis and Clark get included as does Frances Trollope who describes slavery in the southern states. We also get some writing from John Charles Fremont about the Rockies, G D Warburton on St Johns being the fishiest capital in the world and Henry David Thoreau on camping in the Maine Woods. US Rancher Bruce Siberts writes of Fort Pierre in South Dakota having only “a few good people”…”…some argued 15 or 18, but others said the estimate was too high.” Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance describes meeting white man. US hobo Hood River Blackie, aka Ralph Gooding, made good reading about Running Away in 1940.
Central and South America starts with Amerigo Vespucci as he describes his encounters with the locals in Mexico who are “neither Moors nor Jews” and “…..their living is very barbarous, because they do not eat at fixed times,…”. Magellan and Castillo describe the early European exploration of the southern continent. Hans Stade of Hesse, a German sailor, describes his suffering when captured by the Tupinamba people of Brazil in 1547. The English via Chaplain to Drake, Francis Fletcher, along with Walter Raleigh and John Chilton give us details of their adventures with Miles Phillips telling of the cruel judgement of the Inquisition in 1574. Naturalists such as Alexander Von Humbolt and Charles Waterton, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Henry Walter Bates describe everything from mosquitoes to earthquakes. English traveller Henry Nelson Coleridge describes his time in the West Indies trying to cure his rheumatism. US ship officer Ellery Scott witnesses the eruption of Mount Pelee while Aldous Huxley is disappointed in a pitch lake in Trinidad. Patrick Leigh Fermor reappears through this time in Guadeloupe.
Australia and New Zealand starts off with early Dutch navigator Jan Carstenzoon describing aboriginal encounters in 1623 and compatriot Abel Tasman in 1642 with his report on Tasmania. The English follow with Dampier and Cook. Russian navigator Fabian Gottlieb Von Bellingshausen describes the sober nature of Maoris in New Zealand. Exploration of the Australian interior by Charles Sturt and Peter Warburton makes for interesting reading as does Anthony Trollope’s observations on the Australian “….sense of inferiority complex..” during his visit in 1871. Earnest Giles describes his issues with thirst while in the Gibson Desert while across the pond Samuel Butler claimed that “no one can mistake…” Mount Cook. I agree with him there! D H Lawrence describes Australia as “…a weird place.” But “…you get used to it.”
The Artic begins with Christopher Hall in 1576 giving an early view of Frobisher Bay and its inhabitants. Henry Morgan describes football with those inhabitants in 1586! Sir John Franklin is the first of many to describe hunger while exploring while Swedish explorer Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskjold spends time with the Chukchis in north eastern Siberia and notes the “fearful stench” as the locals “obeyed the calls of nature within the bedchamber”. Robert Edwin Peary describes his reaching of the North Pole. Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen explains his joy at meeting Frederick Jackson’s parallel expedition in Franz Joseph Land. Canadian Vilhjamur Stefannsson writes of his love of his dogs and that to eat them “…would be but a step removed from cannibalism”
The Antarctic has US naval officer Charles Wilkes describing icebergs off Oates Land in 1840 while Norwegian Henrick Johan Bull, thought to be the first man to step onto the continent in 1895 calls it a “...strange and pleasurable…” place. Robert Falcon Scott on the other hand describes it as “awful” while Roald Amundsen is the first man to reach the South Pole. Great explorers of the region represented include Earnest Shackleton, Douglas Mawson and Richard Evelyn Byrd.
See comments for more.
April 15, 2015
I picked up this book in a family-owned book shop in small corner of Huon Valley in Tasmania. I bought it because it's cheap, thick and about travelling which I love. It turned out to be awesome. It includes all small paragraphs and writings from travellers through out the history, across the continents. It's truly historical, real, and eye-opener experiences. From Alexander the great, Marco Polo to Wilfred Thesiger, Heinrich Harrer, etc.
To know Eric Newby is another beautiful thing. I love his humors in "A Short Walk In the Hindu Kush". To be an amateur mountaineer myself, it's one of the best books in mountaineering that make me laughs and shared similar experiences. It's like "A Spinal Tap" of Rock music. "These go to eleven" that's how i feel about the book and the man himself.
To know Eric Newby is another beautiful thing. I love his humors in "A Short Walk In the Hindu Kush". To be an amateur mountaineer myself, it's one of the best books in mountaineering that make me laughs and shared similar experiences. It's like "A Spinal Tap" of Rock music. "These go to eleven" that's how i feel about the book and the man himself.
November 11, 2025
The best anthology of travel writing that I've ever come across, and a good reference for finding interesting books about travel that you've never heard of before.
September 18, 2024
I am trying to imagine how long time it took to compile all these travel tales …
What to pick, what to leave out, why, and why not – I would not have been able to do it!
From the very beginning we meet the explorers, the soldiers and conquerors, the missionaries, the tradespeople, the writers in exile and the writers who just passed by and not least the people who just decided it was time for adventure and a move to “the colonies”.
We get both the ordinary and the extraordinary, famous last words from explorers who didn´t survive the ordeals and day to day observations from both hunters and housewifes.
Some explorers I knew, they have now their proper place in history, geography and anthropology and some writers I knew turned out to have kept diaries and letters for the benefit of future generations.
It is, for instance, now clear to me how you lure ducks from the continent into Scotland. You simply keep a stock of almost-tame ducks, treat them well for a season, feed them well and when the time come they want to migrate south, they will tell their fellows how amazingly well a duck is treated in Scotland …
That is until next season. The newcomers are caught, while you take care not to harm the old ones, they have to go south once again and do a commercial.
There are sooo many fantastic tales and absolutely a lot that is spurred by equal parts ignorance, attention-seeking and fantasy.
But it doesn´t matter at all.
At time of writing, ´cause if it´s written down it must be true, everything was swallowed as new and exiting facts, no matter how unlikely to the minds of us in the 21st century.
Once you begin reading the Book of Travellers´ Tales you will be torn between just reading on even if it will cost you sleepless nights or dragging out time because you don´t want the tales coming to an end.
Enjoy 😊
What to pick, what to leave out, why, and why not – I would not have been able to do it!
From the very beginning we meet the explorers, the soldiers and conquerors, the missionaries, the tradespeople, the writers in exile and the writers who just passed by and not least the people who just decided it was time for adventure and a move to “the colonies”.
We get both the ordinary and the extraordinary, famous last words from explorers who didn´t survive the ordeals and day to day observations from both hunters and housewifes.
Some explorers I knew, they have now their proper place in history, geography and anthropology and some writers I knew turned out to have kept diaries and letters for the benefit of future generations.
It is, for instance, now clear to me how you lure ducks from the continent into Scotland. You simply keep a stock of almost-tame ducks, treat them well for a season, feed them well and when the time come they want to migrate south, they will tell their fellows how amazingly well a duck is treated in Scotland …
That is until next season. The newcomers are caught, while you take care not to harm the old ones, they have to go south once again and do a commercial.
There are sooo many fantastic tales and absolutely a lot that is spurred by equal parts ignorance, attention-seeking and fantasy.
But it doesn´t matter at all.
At time of writing, ´cause if it´s written down it must be true, everything was swallowed as new and exiting facts, no matter how unlikely to the minds of us in the 21st century.
Once you begin reading the Book of Travellers´ Tales you will be torn between just reading on even if it will cost you sleepless nights or dragging out time because you don´t want the tales coming to an end.
Enjoy 😊
September 3, 2023
I love these books you dip into and this is a good one. One stand out is advice on being attacked by English Clergyman Frank Tatchell 1923
"Should you be attacked by a mob in the East, hurt one of the crowd and hurt him quickly. The others will gather chattering around the injured man and you will be able to slip away" This advice speaks volumes about Tatchell's and other British people's sense of racial superiority at the time although you do see this technique in Hollywood movies too. Wouldn't like to try it in real life though.
"Should you be attacked by a mob in the East, hurt one of the crowd and hurt him quickly. The others will gather chattering around the injured man and you will be able to slip away" This advice speaks volumes about Tatchell's and other British people's sense of racial superiority at the time although you do see this technique in Hollywood movies too. Wouldn't like to try it in real life though.
March 30, 2020
Great selection of texts offering great inspiration for picking travel literature after reading this! I came across very interesting and sometimes shocking information, while the text can be a great geography lesson. However, I would like more female travellers to be included.
August 19, 2021
I've read this slowly over eight months, a few short pieces at a time. It's a wonderful collection full of humour and horror, but very often leaving me amazed at the ability of human beings to endure all sorts of trying and dangerous journeys in order to increase the understanding between peoples.
November 16, 2020
Wonderful collection. I enjoyed how the tales were presented in chronological order. I had to read in small doses as constantly starting and finishing a story every two minutes grows wearisome.
October 7, 2022
This is a great BIG book. The kind they don't sell anymore, nor write. This is the kind of book a travel writer loves to have around. I'd never heard of Nearchus (325 bc) traveling and writing about being in India! Or Lucy Atkinson, who was married to an architect who was a traveler too, and she wrote wonderful.
My only quibble is that he leaves out Mountain explorers, or claims to in the intro, then he includes them selectively. Newby skips over the biggest travel writer of his period too, Edmund Hillary, including himself instead. I will keep this book around though- it has sources of regions that I won't see anywhere else.
My only quibble is that he leaves out Mountain explorers, or claims to in the intro, then he includes them selectively. Newby skips over the biggest travel writer of his period too, Edmund Hillary, including himself instead. I will keep this book around though- it has sources of regions that I won't see anywhere else.
September 17, 2017
This is va collection of tales written by travellers throughout history. Accounts start from BC to around the 1950's-70's. Some are very entertaining, some are moving, and some are very poetic. There were a few I had to skip over because they were written when people wrote English how they spoke. It was too hard to read. Others I had to skip over because they were written by Christian missionaries or Spanish explorers and were very prejudiced. But the majority of the tales are excellent and give you a different perspective than the what is said in travel books. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the world outside their windows.
January 28, 2014
A brilliant collection of writings about places and people, just as suited to dipping into or good long immersive blocks of reading. I'm more interested in some continents than others (men trekking through ice and snow eating their dogs to stay alive has never appealed to me) but no matter which continent, the collection of writers and writings is fascinating.
May 31, 2024
I read this not long after publication and even rated it here but, for the life of me, cannot recall any thing about it. All I know is I like Eric Newby's writing and I'm putting this book back on the Want To Read list.
April 12, 2017
I`m a sucker for this type of book. It`s full of wonderful anecdotes from a world that no longer exists. I defy anyone to not start looking at maps soon after reading it.
December 21, 2022
Oh my! I’m so thorn about this book… 3.5/5 ⭐️
I’ve been wanting to a book about ancient travel and old ways of doing it and so when I was on vacation in Puerto Escondido, Mexico and saw this book in an ex-pat bookstore/library I had to buy it!
But then as I started reading it, it’s not exactly what I was expecting, some stories are very interesting and about travel and geography but others are so random and you just have to wonder why was it included? Also it’s so clear that they was written by an Englishman because he devoted a whole chapter for England and Ireland, and then the chapter about North America (that wrongly excludes Mexico) has like 90% of stories about the colonies and the first states, nothing from Texas, Florida, Louisiana or California. Then the Oceania one is just about Australia, NZ and one short wink to Papua New Guinea.
Also I know that this was written in 1987 (35 years ago) but still it comes across as xenophobic, misogynistic and racist with the way some authors descriptions are written and also with the selection of stories picked to showcase, I know we can’t rewrite history or ignore the bad practices but reading several stories about black or female slaves, women treated as objects or accessories and mocking cultures mmm I’m sure this could have been a celebration of travel and legacy.
You know I also have to give him props for assembling this in the mid of the 80s without internet and going out to libraries and translating texts, I can only imagine the efforts that he did to but all of this together.
I’ve been wanting to a book about ancient travel and old ways of doing it and so when I was on vacation in Puerto Escondido, Mexico and saw this book in an ex-pat bookstore/library I had to buy it!
But then as I started reading it, it’s not exactly what I was expecting, some stories are very interesting and about travel and geography but others are so random and you just have to wonder why was it included? Also it’s so clear that they was written by an Englishman because he devoted a whole chapter for England and Ireland, and then the chapter about North America (that wrongly excludes Mexico) has like 90% of stories about the colonies and the first states, nothing from Texas, Florida, Louisiana or California. Then the Oceania one is just about Australia, NZ and one short wink to Papua New Guinea.
Also I know that this was written in 1987 (35 years ago) but still it comes across as xenophobic, misogynistic and racist with the way some authors descriptions are written and also with the selection of stories picked to showcase, I know we can’t rewrite history or ignore the bad practices but reading several stories about black or female slaves, women treated as objects or accessories and mocking cultures mmm I’m sure this could have been a celebration of travel and legacy.
You know I also have to give him props for assembling this in the mid of the 80s without internet and going out to libraries and translating texts, I can only imagine the efforts that he did to but all of this together.
January 25, 2024
It was brought in a store where old books are sold for a low price. As a non-fluent, the book has a vocabulary not usual (and the tales by Englishmen from the 16th-17th century are in the English of the time). However, it is understandable and the reading goes with scarce stops to reach a translation.
The book's name pretty much shows what it offers and, for the content, you see the author prioritize the experiences of English travelers, even writing an entire chapter for the Britain islands. Of course, if the target audience is English natives, it is quite understandable. However, this prioritization lost the opportunity to show historically richer reports from different actors. For example, about the Caribbean, the stories told by Britains are worthy, but many Spanish men and indigenous could offer more intimate and complex themes about the region. We see something similar in many chapters of the book, what can be delightful to Britains, seeing their fellows discover the world, but I was expecting more historically relevant accounts (and it can get frustrating to see many times the same nationality over and over again).
The book also prioritizes modern times, leaving a lot of the Middle Ages and ancient times outside. At the beginning of my reading, I was expecting stories about Babylonia, Anglo-Saxons, Ptolemaic Egypt, etc. Nope: the author just gives two or three stories and quickly we are in the 16th century and above.
Is it worth it? Not a bad book, but I would spend my money on another one.
The book's name pretty much shows what it offers and, for the content, you see the author prioritize the experiences of English travelers, even writing an entire chapter for the Britain islands. Of course, if the target audience is English natives, it is quite understandable. However, this prioritization lost the opportunity to show historically richer reports from different actors. For example, about the Caribbean, the stories told by Britains are worthy, but many Spanish men and indigenous could offer more intimate and complex themes about the region. We see something similar in many chapters of the book, what can be delightful to Britains, seeing their fellows discover the world, but I was expecting more historically relevant accounts (and it can get frustrating to see many times the same nationality over and over again).
The book also prioritizes modern times, leaving a lot of the Middle Ages and ancient times outside. At the beginning of my reading, I was expecting stories about Babylonia, Anglo-Saxons, Ptolemaic Egypt, etc. Nope: the author just gives two or three stories and quickly we are in the 16th century and above.
Is it worth it? Not a bad book, but I would spend my money on another one.
August 6, 2021
The introductory collection is hilarious and I almost planned to buy the book (got a library copy), but like all anthologies, not all the pieces are as exciting, and then I lost interest very soon.
bits-and-pieces
September 7, 2022Interesting anecdotes from maybe a hundred or more travellers’ writings. An excellent way to sample writers and see who you might like to look into, and who not.
May 10, 2016
This is a remarkable bit of scholarship. Newby presents brief biographical notes about hundreds of travellers writing during the last few millennia, including all the ones you can think of and many more of whom you have never heard. That alone is worth the read - but he also includes rather brief excerpts from their writings. Some of these are highly entertaining or interesting, others suffer (it seems to me) from being out of context.
Want to Read
August 31, 2014I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12871454
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12871454
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews