A Book of Voyages

Never previously published in this country, A Book of Voyages presents writings by various travelers, annotated and introduced by Patrick O’Brian. Most are taken from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; O’Brian felt that, unlike Elizabethan or Victorian accounts, these writings were relatively unknown in our time.On her journey through the Crimea, Lady Craven witnesses barbaric entertainments in the court of the Tartar Khan. John Bell tells us of his day’s hunting with the Manchu emperor in 1721 outside Peking. An English woman in Madras gives us a detailed description of the extraordinary costume and body decoration of a high-born Indian woman, wife of a nabob.These and other selections are glimpses of a world, now gone forever, that few readers would ever see for themselves. They are also quite possibly the inspiration for the travels and adventures of O’Brian’s own fictional heroes Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin.Pleasant travels by land. Lady Craven's: a journey through the Crimea to Constantinople --Dr. John Moore's: a view of society and manners in France, Switzerland, and Germany --Dr. Gemelli-Careri's: travels through Europe --Philip Thicknesse's "general hints to strangers who travel through France" --Unpleasant voyages. "The distresses of the unfortunate crew of the ship Anne and Mary from Norway to Ireland in the year 1759" --Captain Boyce's "narrative of the loss of Luxemborough" --"The sufferings of six deserters during their passage in a whale boat from the island of St. Helena to Brazil" --Fra Denis de Carli's "a voyage to Congo in the years 1666 and 1667" --"An account of the wonderful preservation of the ship Terra Nova of London" --Edward Pellham's voyage to Greenland --Oriental splendour. "The mogul's birthday" from the journal of Sir Thomas Roe --"The mogul's peacock throne" from Jean-Baptiste Tavernier's travels through Turkey and Persia to the Indies --"Hunting with the Emperor K'Ang Hsi" from John Bell's travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to diverse parts of Asia --"The Nabob's lady" from the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1745 --"The indefatigable tourist" from Philip Skippon's account of a journey made thro' part of the low-countries, Germany, Italy, and France, 1663 --Inefficient pirates. Sir William Monson's navel tracts --Robert Everard's relation to three years of sufferings upon the island of Assada near Madagascar in a voyage to India in the year 1686 --Colonel Norwood's voyage to Virginia --A list of sea terms