eBooks de Narrativa de viajes, página 45 de 53

In 2013 Ian Crofton undertook a journey he had been pondering for years: a walk along the Border between Scotland and England. It would be an exploration both of his own identity - not quite Scottish, not quite English - and of a largely unexplored stretch of country. Apart from the line marked on the map, the route is not obvious. For much of its length the Border either follows the middle of various rivers, or traces the Southern Upland watershed, an area of bleak moorland and dense conifer plantations. During the course of his walk, Ian Crofton investigates the history, literature and legend of the Border. He talks to a range of people he comes across - farmers, landladies, bar staff, anglers, labourers, shepherds, shopkeepers - to find out what they make of the Border, if anything at all. Such conversations lead to a consideration of the very nature of borders. Do they provide a necessary defence of the nationstate? Or are they, in this day and age, an affront to global justice? Walking the Border is in the best traditions of travel writing, combining vivid description with human insight, the whole spiced with a wry sense of the absurdity and necessity of both inward and outward journeys.

When Roger H. Guichard Jr. discovered a French translation of the works of Carsten Niebuhr, sole survivor of the 1761-1767 Royal Danish Expedition to the Yemen, he was astounded. They were not just another dry account of one mans travels, but represented the record of a serious intellectual enterprise involving Enlightenment science, sacred philology, the Bible as history, Orientalism, Egyptology, and discovery. Having translated them from French to English, and then cross-referenced his translations with the original German texts, Niebuhr in Egypt is not, as one might expect, simply a presentation of his translation. Instead Guichard offers his readers an account of the expeditions year in Egypt, with lengthy excursions into the several subplots- Enlightenment science, the Bible as history, and Egyptology - that he found so engaging in the original works. This is not a scholarly work but would appeal to anyone with an interest in any of the areas mentioned or simply to anyone interested in this countrys past and present.

In 1849, Thoreau published his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The actual voyage was performed by the two brothers Henry and John in the late summer of 1839 in a boat of their own making, "painted green below with a border of blue, with reference to the two elements in which it was to spend its existence." During his Walden retirement, Thoreau worked over the original record of his pleasant outing, expanding it greatly by the inclusion of very various material, and had it published at his own risk by Monroe in 1849. It was the year of the Argonauts, of the gold-rush to California, and such literary treasure as the odd book contained was not much regarded. Though favourably reviewed by Ripley and by Lowell, it did not please the public, and over seven hundred copies out of an impression of one thousand were thrown back on the authors hands. It is another of the paradoxes of Thoreaus career that since his death, this failure has been edited with almost benedictine care.

In 1849, Thoreau published his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. The actual voyage was performed by the two brothers Henry and John in the late summer of 1839 in a boat of their own making, "painted green below with a border of blue, with reference to the two elements in which it was to spend its existence." During his Walden retirement, Thoreau worked over the original record of his pleasant outing, expanding it greatly by the inclusion of very various material, and had it published at his own risk by Monroe in 1849. It was the year of the Argonauts, of the gold-rush to California, and such literary treasure as the odd book contained was not much regarded. Though favourably reviewed by Ripley and by Lowell, it did not please the public, and over seven hundred copies out of an impression of one thousand were thrown back on the authors hands. It is another of the paradoxes of Thoreaus career that since his death, this failure has been edited with almost benedictine care.

Excursions includes the posthumous travel-writing essays of the famous American author. In detail these are:Natural History Of Massachusetts.A Walk To Wachusett.The Landlord.A Winter Walk.Walking.Autumnal Tints.Wild Apples.Night And Moonlight.

In 1854, Thoreau published the book by which he will always be best known, Walden, or Life in the Woods. It is by far the deepest, richest, and most closely jointed of his books. It shows Thoreau at his best, and contains all that he had to say to the world. In fact, he is a man of one book, and that book is Walden. In plan, it is open to the same objection as "A Week", and might almost plead guilty to the charge of obtaining a hearing under false pretences. "Life in the woods" suggests the atmosphere of As You Like It and the Robin Hood ballads, but not moralizings on economy and the duty of being yourself. The reader who takes up the book with the idea that he is going to enjoy another Robinson Crusoe will not be pleased to find that every now and then he will have to listen to a lay sermon, or a lyceum lecture.

In a stunning memoir-cum-travelogue Peter Carey charts this journey, inspired by Charleys passion for Japanese Manga and anime, and explores his own resulting re-evaluation of Japan. Although graphically violent and disturbing, the two mediums are both inherently concerned with Japans rich history and heritage, and hold a huge popular appeal that crosses the generations.Led by their adolescent guide Takashi, an uncanny mix of generosity and derision, father and son look for the hidden puzzles and meanings, searching, often with comic results, for a greater understanding of these art forms, and for what they come to refer to as their own real Japan. From Manhattan to Tokyo, Commodore Perry to Godzilla, kabuki theatre to the post-war robot craze, Wrong about Japan is a fascinatingly personal, witty and moving exploration of two very different cultures.

"Roughing It" is another one of Mark Twains chronicles of his wandering years, this one being the prequel to "Innocents Abroad." His adventures take place in the Wild West, Salt Lake City and even in Hawaii - among other places. He even enlists as a Confederate cavalryman for some time. The book is also a prolific example for Twains excellent sense of humour.

The character of American humor, and its want of resemblance to the humor of Kamtschatka and Patagonia,will the reader forgive us if we fail to set down here the thoughts suggested by these fresh and apposite topics? Will he credit us with a self-denial proportioned to the vastness of Mr. Clementss very amusing book, if we spare to state why he is so droll, orwhich is as much to the purposewhy we do not know? This reticence will leave us very little to say by way of analysis; and, indeed, there is very little to say of "The Innocents Abroad" which is not of the most obvious and easy description. The idea of a steamer-load of Americans going on a prolonged picnic to Europe and the Holy Land is itself almost sufficiently delightful, and it is perhaps praise enough for the author to add that it suffers nothing from his handling. If one considers the fun of making a volume of six hundred octavo pages upon this subject, in compliance with one of the main conditions of a subscription books success, bigness namely, one has a tolerably fair piece of humor, without troubling Mr. Clements further. It is out of the bounty and abundance of his own nature that he is as amusing in the execution as in the conception of his work. And it is always good-humored humor, too, that he lavishes on his reader, and even in its impudence it is charming; we do not remember where it is indulged at the cost of the weak or helpless side, or where it is insolent, with all its sauciness and irreverence. The standard shams of travel which everybody sees through suffer possibly more than they ought, but not so much as they might; and one readily forgives the harsh treatment of them in consideration of the novel piece of justice done on such a traveller as suffers under the pseudonyme of Grimes. It is impossible also that the quality of humor should not sometimes be strained in the course of so long a narrative; but the wonder is rather in the fact that it is strained so seldom.

A happy and interesting jumble is this book of Mark Twains. It is like a lucky-bag at a fair. In his zigzag journey around the world, the humorist has made a collection of odds and ends of fun, philosophy, and fantastic description, such as has never been gathered in the pages of a single book, and any one dipping in at random is sure of a prize. The heterogeneous mass has some pretense of being loosely strung together, but it is on a line as long as the Equator itself. It is a travelers miscellany a globe-trotters hotch-potch a sociologists cabinet of specimens, all bearing the quaint labelings of the creator of Puddnhead Wilson. Here is a rare bit of humor surreptitiously picked up in a New Zealand drawing-room; there a sample fragment of a life-tragedy which the trophy-hunter knocked off Molokai. This division of the cabinet contains an incident from the stage-door of a New York theater; that, next to it, a unique string of anecdotes of tiger-hunting in Baroda. And according to the labels, many of the specimens were picked up in very unexpected places; as for instance, the yarn about Barnum which the collector found in Delagoa bay. But wherever found, or however incongruously grouped, this cabinet of odds and ends of life is one of the most interesting and unique collections ever made by a traveler.

When Mark Twain was seventeen he went back to the home of his boyhood resolved to become a pilot on the Mississippi. How he learnt the river he has told us in Life on the Mississippi, wherein his adventures, his experiences, and his impressions while he was a cub-pilot are recorded with a combination of precise veracity and abundant humor which makes the earlier chapters of that marvelous book a most masterly fragment of autobiography. The life of a pilot was full of interest and excitement and opportunity, and what young Clemens saw and heard and divined during the years when he was going up and down the mighty river we may read in these pages.

Meander through Provence in the company of Henry James experiencing the sights, culture and sounds of late nineteenth-century Southern France in this new book in Hesperuss bestselling On series. In 1882, a year after the publication of his wildly successful The Portrait of a Lady, which dealt with the difficulties faced by American expatriate Daisy Miller in Europe, Henry James set out a six-week tour of south-eastern France, taking in Tours, Bourges, Nantes, Toulouse and Arles. Although a sometime resident of Paris, James was convinced that the soul of France resided not in the capital but in the provinces, and he set out to find it. Beginning in Touraine, James followed the course of the Rho;ne north to Burgundy, writing articles on architecture, literature and personal observation that were serialised in The Atlantic Monthly. The resulting work is a fascinating patchwork, switching seamlessly between the broad strokes of classic travel writing and the smallest details of human behaviour for which James is best known. On provence is at once an excellent example of James prose writing and an outstanding work of travel writing in its own right.

In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale.This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolinis new Roman Imperium.Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901. Best known in the West as a novelist and short story writer, he was also a prolific scholar whose interests ranged widely across the whole field of European literature. Debarred from a university post by reason of his Jewish ancestry, he taught in a commercial secondary school until increasing persecution led to his brutal death in a labour camp, in 1945. Yet the tone of his writing is almost always deceptively light, the fierce intelligence softened by a gentle tolerance, wry humour and understated irony. Pushkin Presss publications of Szerbs work include his novels Journey by Moonlight, Oliver VII and The Pendragon Legend, as well as the short story collection Love in a Bottle and the history The Queens Necklace.

Francis Younghusband was barely twenty years old when he set out in search of "the true spirit of the Himalayas". Written forty years later, this book takes a retrospective look at the two expeditions he made between 1886 and 1889 for which the Royal Geographic Society awarded him its Gold Medal. The first of these expeditions took him from Peking to Kashmir via a route that was 5,500 kilometers long. In the second, he explored the uncharted Karakoram and Pamir passes. Previously unpublished in Spanish, this work conveys with serenity the passion of his youth and the satisfaction he derived from those vast Himalayan landscapes. The present edition commemorates the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of its authors birth.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Complete Travel Writings of Mark Twain" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. It is a complete collection of Mark Twains travel writings including The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It, A Tramp Abroad, Following the Equator and Some Rambling Notes of an Idle Excursion - presented in a single volume. Based on a series of letters Mark Twain wrote from Europe for San Francisco and New York newspapers as a roving correspondent, The Innocents Abroad, published in 1869, is a caricature of the sentimental travel books popular in the mid-nineteenth century. Mark Twains fresh and humorous perspective on hallowed European landmarks lacked reverence for the past, and was as mocking about American manners as it was about European attitudes. Mark Twain was the pen name of Samuel Clemens (18351910), the American author whose classic works of fiction are notable for their narrative voice, humour and social criticism.

Since the voyage of Columbus in search of the New World, and of Raleigh in quest of El Dorado, no visit to America has excited so much interest and conjecture as that of the author of "Oliver Twist." . . . In the mean time the book, however disconcerting to those persons who had looked for something quite different, will bring no disappointment to such as can be luxuriously content with good sense, good feeling, good fun, and good writing. The information, with few exceptions, might be gained much more advantageously from the map and gazetteer. The perusal of them has served chiefly to lower our estimate of the man, and to fill us with contempt for such a compound of egotism, coxcombry, and cockneyism. . . . We have never read a book, professing to give an account of any country, which, in respect to its natural features, its towns and cities, its manners and customs, its social, civil, and religious institutionsin short, in respect to everything about which the reader wishes to receive information, or at least to ascertain the opinions of the author, is so profoundly silent as the book before us.

A great part of the last four years of Stevensons life was occupied, very unfortunately for his literary work, in an active share in Samoan politics. For some years before he began to travel in the Pacific, the islands in which he at last made his home, had been in a disturbed condition from causes partly arising from native differences, and partly from foreign interference. Before ever he had reached Samoa he had espoused the cause of the native race of Honolulu, and in February 1889 had written to The Times crying against German aggressiveness in Samoa, displayed not only in relations with the natives, but against American and English. Inasmuch as A Footnote to History records Samoan affairs from 1883 to 1891, it should be noted that Stevenson first set foot in Samoa at Christmas 1889, and after a brief stay was absent nearly the whole of the following year. Thus it was only during one of the eight years that he was in direct touch with what was going on. The history of the previous period he gathered from white residents such as H. J. Moors {q.v.) and others who more or less shared his political views, or at any rate from motives of interest were opposed to the German element.

This edition includes the most important travel writings by the famous author:The Silverado SquattersAcross The PlainsThe Amateur EmigrantCockermouth And Keswick - A FragmentAn Autumn EffectA Winters Walk In Carrick And Galloway - A FragmentA Mountain Town In France [175] - A FragmentRandom Memories: Rosa Quo LocorumThe Ideal HouseDavos In WinterHealth And MountainsAlpine DiversionsThe Stimulation Of The AlpsRoadsOn The Enjoyment Of Unpleasant PlacesFootnotesAn Inland VoyageTravels With A Donkey In The Cevennes

In the South Seas, as here available to the reader, is the result of a journey on the Casco together with Stevensons mother, wife and stepson. The earlier parts, those on the Marquesas and Paumotos, or low or atoll islands, most definitely mark Stevensons original intention ; those on the Gilberts, with their picture of the king Tembinok, are more in the personal strain of R. L. S., and are thus accepted as the most successful part of these writings. But the things most to be regretted about them is their omissions ; nothing of Stevensons long stay at Tautira as the guest of the chief Ori a Ori, nor of his visit to the leper settlement of Molokai. His letters to friends in England, and the extracts from his journal in the Life do something to fill in these gaps, but not in proportion to the interest of the subjects.

The productions of Washington Irving are deservedly held in high estimation, not so much, perhaps, for their intrinsic merits as literary compositions, although in this respect they hold no mean position, as for the inimitable tracings of adventurous life which they display through all their gradations and variety, and for the interest they keep alive in the reader, without outraging nature.Several hundred miles beyond the Mississippi extended a vast tract of uninhabited country, where there is neither to be seen the log-house of the white man nor the wigwam of the Indian. It consisted of large grassy plains, interspersed with forests and groves, and watered by the Arkansas, the Grand Canadian, the Red River, and all their tributary streams. Over these fertile and verdant wastes roamed the elk, the buffalo, and the wild horse, in all their native freedomand these were, in fact, the hunting-grounds of the various inhabitants of the Far West. Thither repaired the Osage, the Creek, the Delaware, and other tribes, that had linked themselves with civilization, and lived within the vicinity of the white settlements; and here resorted also the Pawnees, the Comanches, and a variety of fierce and as yet independent rovers, the nomades of the prairies, or the inhabitants of the skirts of the Rocky Mountains.