Time Travel
Classic Travel and Tourism Books
Compiled and Indexed by Richard Seltzer B&R Samizdat Express - October 28, 2004
ISBN: 0-931968-94-1
Genre: Travel, History, Social Science
Reviewed by Rochelle Caviness - December 27, 2004
No matter where you live, every place is exotic and intriguing. This is as true today as it was hundreds of years ago, and throughout history there have been those adventurous souls who have left behind their homes and families to explore the greater world. Many of those that survived their journeys returned home to tell those they left behind about the wondrous lands and people they had met. With the advent of the printing press, many of these intrepid travelers began to write, and publish travel monologues, allowing a wider audience to vicariously experience the traveler's adventures. For modern readers, these monologues provide both historical testimony as well as a glimpse back at how our forefathers viewed the world that they lived in.
A wonderful collection of historic travel monologues and guidebooks can be found in Richard Seltzer's anthology, Time Travel: Classic Travel and Tourism Books. This anthology features more than 140 books on one CD. The books in this collection are organized into geographically thematic categories, namely Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, Australia, the South Seas, and the World in general. These categories are further organized by country. Text that you will discover in this collection include:
Klondyke Nuggets: a Brief Description of the Great Gold Region of the Northwest Territories and Alaska by Joseph Ladue, 1897
Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery by George Borrow
American Notes by Charles Dickens
Inca Land: Exploration in the Highlands of Peru by Hiram Bingham, 1922
Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal in 1816 by J.B. Savigny and Alexander Correard
Travels Through the Empire of Morocco by John Buffa, 1810
Through the Brazilian Wilderness by Theodore Roosevelt
What I Saw in California by Edwin Bryant, 1849
A Ride to India Across Persia and Baluchistan by Harry de Windt
Recollections of Calcutta by Montague Massey, 1918
Camps and Travel in China by Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
All the files in this collection are texts in plain text format that are currently in the public domain, and most where written prior to the 1920's. Consequently, most are written from a male, Caucasian, European centric viewpoint. This is not unexpected, as most early travel writers where male. However, there were numerous women who traveled the world, some explored on their own, while other accompanied their husbands or fathers. Many of these women penned their own accounts of their adventures, often providing a unique perspective compared to their male counterparts. Not surprisingly, this collection contains a wide selection of travel texts written by women, including:
Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope (1832)
Visit to Iceland and the Scandinavian North by Madame Ida Pfeiffer
A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53, by Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacy
A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador: An Account of the Exploration of the Nascaupee and George Rivers by Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior
Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley
Hawaiian Archipelago by Isabella Bird
In the Heart of the Vosges by Miss Betham-Edwards, 1911
Combined, this collection of travel books provides and intriguing glimpse at how our predecessors
viewed the world around them. This collection of travel books makes for fascinating reading and serves as an outstanding resource for students interested in geography, history, and cultural studies. A complete index of all the books contained in this collection can be found online at: http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat/travel.html.
This CD is designed to runs on Windows based PCs. You also need to have a web browser (such as Internet Explorer or Netscape) and/or a Windows based word-processing program such as Microsoft Word, or Corel's Word Perfect, in order to open the texts. Once a text is opened, you can enlarge the font size to suit your reading needs. This collection is fully compatible with most computer screen reading and magnification programs. In addition, included in this collection is a copy of ReadPlease, a text-to-speech program that a can be used to make your computer read the text of these books out loud to you.
Related Reviews:
Dragon Hunter, by Charles Gallenkamp. Dragon Hunter is the biography of Roy Chapman Andrews. A real life Indiana Jones, Andrews may have actually been the model for this fictional character. While this book offers the reader a comprehensive overview of Andrews life and work, the main focus of this biography is Andrews' expeditions to Central Asia, which took place between 1922 and 1930. (Audio)
Honeymoon in Purdah, by Alison Wearing.
This enlightening travelogue follows Wearing as she, and her gay roommate, travel across Iran posing as a married couple on their honeymoon. (Large Print)
