Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a follow up of the author's A Collection of Classic Travel Narratives which provided extracts from his abridgments of the narratives of thirty five journeys spanning the great range of time from 1245 to 1896. With just one exception they are written in the first person by the traveller, and several are from translations into English where first given in another language. Travel Narratives over Five Centuries in three volumes fleshes out those extracts into about twenty-five abridgments of those travels. This first volume of nine abridgments starts with Pero Tafur's visit in the late middle ages to The Holy Land in which he also toured much of central Europe as well as Egypt and Sinai. Highlights in volume 1 are Burchell's fascinating story of his penetration into the heart of Africa in 1811 where an earlier pair of white men had never been heard of again, and in volume 2 Byron's account of his and his companions' great distresses following shipwreck in 1741. Volume 2 ends with Mary Kingsley's charming writing about her remarkable journey into the heart of equatorial Africa, where Gaboon French officials thought she was bent on self destruction. Also there is Arthur Young's famous Travels in France while the Revolution was still unfolding.
