The Englishwoman in America

Bird, Isabella. The Englishwoman in America, 1856.

In 1856, Isabella Bird published The Englishwoman in America, the first of what would be many books of her travels around the world. Adopting a tone of aloof bemusement, she describes in detail the hardships and annoyances of her travels by sea from England to Halifax, and on the road to Boston, Cincinnati, and Chicago. The book's 20 chapters are full of keenly observed and entertainingly told stories of pickpockets and luggage thieves, greasy hotels, and Americans who are very polite, but have the unfortunate habit of spitting on the floor. Bird admits to sharing the regrettably prejudiced view the English have of America, but nevertheless finds much to like and admire in this new country bustling with ethnically diverse immigrants full of energy and bravado. The Englishwoman in America is a wonderful travelogue that offers a lively and personal glimpse into mid-nineteenth-century America. 

 

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Around the World in Seventy-Two Days

Bly, Nellie. Around the World in Seventy-Two Days. New York: The Pictorial Weeklies Company, 1890.

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days is a book by journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, writing under her pseudonym, Nellie Bly. The chronicle details her 72-day trip around the world, which was inspired by the book, Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. She carried out the journey for Joseph Pulitzer's tabloid newspaper, the New York World.

 

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Round the World on a Wheel

Fraser, John Foster. Round the World on a Wheel. London: Methuen & Co., 1899.

 

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Bits of Travel

Hunt Jackson, Helen. Bits of Travel. Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1874.

 

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Bits of Travel at Home

Hunt Jackson, Helen. Bits of Travel at Home. Boston: Little, Brown, 1909.

 

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A Little Tour in France

James, Henry. A Little Tour in France. Boston: J.R. Osgood and Co., 1885.

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Diary of a Pilgrimage

Jerome, Jerome Klapka. Diary of a Pilgrimage. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1891.

 

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Roughing it in the Bush

Moodie, Susanna. Roughing it in the Bush. London: R. Bentley, 1857.

 

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Across Asia on a Bicycle

Allen, Thomas Gaskell, and William Lewis Sachtleben. Across Asia on a Bicycle. New York: The Century Co, 1894.

This volume is made up of a series of sketches describing the most interesting part of a bicycle journey around the world,—our ride across Asia. We were actuated by no desire to make a “record” in bicycle travel, although we covered 15,044 miles on the wheel, the longest continuous land journey ever made around the world. 

The day after we were graduated at Washington University, St. Louis, Mo., we left for New York. Thence we sailed for Liverpool on June 23, 1890. Just three years afterward, lacking twenty days, we rolled into New York on our wheels, having “put a girdle round the earth.” 

Our bicycling experience began at Liverpool. After following many of the beaten lines of travel in the British Isles we arrived in London, where we formed our plans for traveling across Europe, Asia, and America. The most dangerous regions to be traversed in such a journey, we were told, were western China, the Desert of Gobi, and central China. Never since the days of Marco Polo had a European traveler succeeded in crossing the Chinese empire from the west to Peking. 

Crossing the Channel, we rode through Normandy to Paris, across the lowlands of western France to Bordeaux, eastward over the Lesser Alps to Marseilles, and along the Riviera into Italy. After visiting every important city on the peninsula, we left Italy at Brindisi on the last day of 1890 for Corfu, in Greece. Thence we traveled to Patras, [pg xii]proceeding along the Corinthian Gulf to Athens, where we passed the winter. We went to Constantinople by vessel in the spring, crossed the Bosporus in April, and began the long journey described in the following pages. When we had finally completed our travels in the Flowery Kingdom, we sailed from Shanghai for Japan. Thence we voyaged to San Francisco, where we arrived on Christmas night, 1892. Three weeks later we resumed our bicycles and wheeled by way of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas to New York. 

During all of this journey we never employed the services of guides or interpreters. We were compelled, therefore, to learn a little of the language of every country through which we passed. Our independence in this regard increased, perhaps, the hardships of the journey, but certainly contributed much toward the object we sought—a close acquaintance with strange peoples. 

During our travels we took more than two thousand five hundred photographs, selections from which are reproduced in the illustrations of this volume. 

 

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From Pekin to Calais by Land

De Windt, Harry. From Pekin to Calais by Land. London: Chapmann and Hall, 1889.

There are two Englishmen at present living in Shangai who have travelled overland from Europe to China. I was told, when there, that these gentlemen are continually receiving letters from England asking for information relative to the journey from Petersburg to Pekin and vice versa, via the Gobi Desert and Siberia. It was mainly owing to this circumstance that I publish these pages, for I fear the general reader will find little of interest in this account of a monotonous pilgrimage through Europe and Asia....

 

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Sailing Alone around the World

Slocum, Joshua. Sailing Alone around the World. New York: The Century Co, 1900.

Joshua Slocum’s autobiographical account of his solo trip around the world is one of the most remarkable – and entertaining – travel narratives of all time. Setting off alone from Boston aboard the thirty-six-foot wooden sloop Spray in April 1895, Captain Slocum went on to join the ranks of the world’s great circumnavigators – Magellan, Drake, and Cook. But by circling the globe without crew or consorts, Slocum would outdo them all: his three-year solo voyage of more than 46,000 miles remains unmatched in maritime history for its courage, skill, and determination.

 

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Around the World in Eighty Days

Verne, Jules. Around the World in Eighty Days. Boston: James R. Osgood, 1873.

 

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Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingt Jours

Verne, Jules. Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-Vingt Jours. Paris: Hetzel et C.ie, 1874.

 

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Le Tour du Monde en 240 Jours

Michel, Ernest. Le Tour du Monde en 240 Jours. Nice: Patronage de Saint-Pierre, 1882.

 

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