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"A Tramp Abroad" is one of Mark Twains famous travel books, describing the events of a journey to Europe with his fictional friend Harris. They start their journey in Germany, travel through Switzerland and the Eastern part of France and touch cities in Northern Italy as well as some well-known mountains in the Alps. Twains humor is exceedingly fit to tell of many funny situations that the both of them encounter.

"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.

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.

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.

The "English Note-Books" were the result of Hawthornes residence abroad, on being appointed Consul at Liverpool, by President Pierce. Although the "English Note-Books" are not so abundant in imaginative hints as the American, their range of topic and observation is wider, and they show how readily the author, who had lived as a recluse at home, adapted himself to society, to the obligations which his public position and his fame brought upon him.

A rich meditation: on separation, on possession, on Renaissance artists, and, inevitably, on the transformative nature of travel.The TimesWritten in prose that constantly reminds us what language can do.Times Literary SupplementA writer of almost electrifying intensity ... This book is a ray of intricate sunlight.Irish TimesWhen Rachel Cusk decides to travel to Italy for a summer with her husband and two young children, she has no idea of the trials and wonders that lie in store. Their journey leads them to both the expected and the surprising, all seen through Cusks sharp and humane perspective.

Travel to the Orient with Rudyard Kipling in the latest instalment of Hesperuss bestselling On series. Rudyard Kipling spent many years abroad and his relationship with India is explored in several of his works, both fiction and non-fiction. After leaving school, Kipling was sent to Lahore to take up a job at a local newspaper. He would go on, a few years later, to take up a post at the Pioneer in Allahabad. Kipling said that only a few hours after arriving in India: my English years fell away, nor ever, I think, came back in full strength Whilst working for the Pioneer Kipling wrote a series of sketches about life in India. In 1889, he left India to become the Pioneers roving correspondent; he would travel to Burma, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canton and Japan. This collection comprises essays from both his sketches of India and the rest of the Orient, showcasing Kiplings observations, opinions and itinerary. Although his writings might feature in some places outdated opinions and points of view, his eye for detail, character and colour, along with his masterful style, give these pieces a timeless feel and shed new light on the writings of a writer with which we thought we were familiar.

A delightful meditation on the pleasures of bachelor bonding and an example of collaborative journalism at its best _x000D_ _x000D_In autumn 1857, Charles Dickens embarked on a sightseeing trip to Cumberland with his friend, the rising star of literature Wilkie Collins. Writing together, they reported their adventures for Dickens periodical Household Words, producing a showcase of both long-cherished and entirely novel sides of these well-loved men of letters. Boasting two ghost stories from undisputed masters of the genre, it also uniquely demonstrates their glee in caricaturing themselves and one anotherCollins assumes the identity of Thomas Idle (a born-and-bred idler) and Dickens that of Francis Goodchild (laboriously idle). Through their fictional counterparts, the men relentlessly satirize Dickens maniacal energy and Collins idleness. The result is an exuberant diary of a journey and a rare insight into one of literatures most famed and intriguing friendships.

The latest in Hesperuss On series comes from master travel writer Mark Twain and concentrates on his journey through Americas Wild West, tapping into the perennial interest in this period in history. From 1861 to 1867, a young Mark Twain travelled through the Wild West. Following an abortive foray into a career as a Confederate Cavalry man he opted instead to head off on a stagecoach road trip with his brother Orion, who had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory. Twain sets out on an epic voyage from Missouri to Sacramento. He will visit Salt Lake City, witness the beginning of the real estate boom and try his hand at silver mining in Nevada. Travelling in turn by boat, train and coach, through mountains and deserts, he comes across Native Americans, visits a Mormon village and becomes stranded in a snowstorm. Discovering a land in the grasp of a boom and bust mentality, Twain is caught up in the lust for instant wealth which remains always tantalisingly close. Priceless anecdotes detail the amusing mishaps and bad judgement calls that ensure that the authors riches are kept at arms length. Even at this early stage of his budding career, Twains trademark humour is visible - no one is safe from Twains wit. Train drivers, coachmen, fellow passengers and locals, all become victims of the authors pen as he hones his trade.

"And the desert has you - you and your splendid courage my queen of the desert - and my heart with you" Major Charles Doughty-Wylie Gertrude Bell CBE is rightly known as The Queen of the Desert and a new Hollywood film based on her life, featuring Nicole Kidman, James Franco, Damian Lewis and Robert Pattinson is due for release in 2015. A woman far ahead of her time, Gertrude gained a first from Oxford at a time when very few subjects were even open to women. She went on to take an active interest in politics before embarking on her one-woman travels across the Middle East. She chronicled her journeys through Iraq, Persia, Syria and beyond and her important diplomatic work, with characteristic wit and incisiveness. Despite the many achievements of her working life, sadly her personal life was marred by losing the great love of her life, Major Charles Doughty-Wylie, from which she never recovered. She died in 1926 of an apparent overdose of sleeping pills. Hesperus selects the best of her travel writing in a unique new collection

A travel writing classic ready to be rediscovered, Europe in the Looking Glass describes, with a mixture of laugh-out-loud humour and perceptive commentary on art and architecture, how three rich young Englishmen cross pre-World-War-Two Europe in an old car. Best known as the author of The Road to Oxiana, published in 1937, Robert Byron developed his considerable writing skills on a travel book which has not been in print since 1926. Europe in the Looking Glass describes a journey Byron made with three friends, driving across Europe between two world wars, and mixes political and historical analysis with architectural insights, classical scholarship and the day-to-day adventures of three young and not very experienced travelers. For fans of Robert Byrons work this will be a discovery; for others it will be an introduction. Turning a corner we suddenly found ourselves sliding down a precipice, tilted so far forward that it was necessary to hold ourselves back with our hands pressed against the dashboard, as half a dozen Apennine valleys beckoned invitingly below... Here [St Peters] Popes with black faces and golden crowns are wallowing twice life-size in the titanic folds of marble tablecloths, their ormolu fringes festooning upon the arms of graceful skeletons to disclose some Alice-in-Wonderland door or the grim hinges of some sepulchral grill...

A guide to understanding the Irish that unravels their idiosyncracies and national characteristics.

A guide to understanding the Welsh that explores their nature and outlook with benevolence and humour.

Cuarta entrega de la serie «Quinteto de la muerte».La historia de una mujer valeinte, decidida y que luchará por su cuando, en su camino, se cruzará Eduardo.Isabel creía que podía con todo hasta que,