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Our feet were made for walking. Our eyes for observing. And our hands for writing. Travel and literature have gone together for centuries. Pack your bags with any of these classic travel titles that bring the sights, sounds, and tastes of faraway lands closer to home.
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Sam T. Clover
Recommended by Adjala Bookshop, Woodstock, ON, Canada
The author's first book, published at age 25, following a 40,000 mile trip starting and ending in Chicago. His travels took him to California, the South Pacific and back through the Suez canal, working variously as a sailor, a bookmaker's clerk, a circus hand and performer, and a steward.
Chicago, M. D. Kimball, 1884. First edition. (VG) This book is bound in green cloth, stamped in black on cover and spine, with brown endpapers. The author's name on the cover is S. T. followed by a number of clovers swirling around the middle of the cover. Moderate wear. The rear cover and the head of the spine have white-ish waterstains. The lower outer corner of the front pastedown is missing and a small bit of the front free endpaper is missing (actually it is stuck to the inside of the cover). The verso of the front free endpaper has pencil scribbling. A blank leaf at the rear is gone. Still, a very good copy of a very scarce book.
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Charles M. Doughty
Recommended by Stephen at Biblion, London, UK
"Doughty was by no means the first Englishman to travel in Arabia but his book is special for two reasons. Firstly, he did not travel as a rich man or a man of letters. He travelled as a poor man, often ill, often hungry and thirsty who relied on his own inner strength and in his Christianity which he did not disguise (but did not preach either) as much as he did on the Arabs. Secondly, he had no agenda other than to describe everything he observed and experienced on his travels which lasted two years as fully and as precisely as possible."
Jonathan Cape, London, 1936. [first published London, 1888]. New and definitive edition. With an introduction by T.E. Lawrence. Two volumes. Quarto. A beautiful set bound in full sand-coloured morocco with contrasting spine labels.
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Paul Theroux
First published in 1975, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains - the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express - are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian.
Boston Houghton Mifflin Company 1975. First edition. Fine in a modestly worn, very good dustwrapper. Inscribed by Paul Theroux on the title page to his youngest sister: "For Mary, my first love. Paul. New Barnstable. 20 Aug 1975."
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Heinrich Harrer
In 1943, Heinrich Harrer, a youthful Austrian adventurer, escaped from a British internment camp in India and traveled through the Himalayas to the Forbidden City of Lhasa in Tibet. His curious appearance and the traditional hospitality of Tibetan society soon worked in his favor. His intelligence and his European ways also intrigued the curious young Dalai Lama, and he became his tutor and trusted confidant. When the Chinese invaded Tibet in 1950, Harrer and the Dalai Lama fled the country together.
Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Foxing to the front and rear endpapers. Light fading to the jacket spine and toning to the rear panel. Front panel quite bright and clean. Signed and inscribed by Harrer to author and historian Richard Tobin and his wife Sylvia. Dated April 1956. Signed below that in Tibetan. First edition.
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James Bradley Thayer
Recommended by Adjala Bookshop, Woodstock, ON, Canada
James Bradley Thayer (1831-1902) was a Boston attorney, legal scholar, and professor at Harvard University. He had business dealings with Emerson and was one of a party of twelve who, with Emerson, went in a private Pullman car from Boston to California , and travelled there for several weeks, in 1871. Thayer wrote a number of diary-like letters to his wife while on the trip which later formed the basis for this account.
Boston, Little, Brown, 1884., 1884. (VG+). First edition. 141 pp. in tan cloth, printed in gilt on the cover, t.e.g., grey endpapers. BAL, Volume Three, p. 68. A clean copy, slightly darkened on the spine, with a moderate spine lean. The fore-edge of the rear free endpaper is missing 1.5 cm along its length.
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John Steinbeck
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light - these were Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco - reflecting on the American character, racial hostility, on a particular form of American loneliness, and on the unexpected kindness of strangers.
Book Description: Viking., New York, NY, U.S.A., 1962. Fine+ in Near Fine dust jacket; A very nice copy of this 1st Edition/1st Print copy in Very Fine condition in Very Near Fine dust jacket with minimal rubbing and fading of its spine. An exceptional collectible.
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Bruce Chatwin
Recommended by Stephen at Biblion, London, UK
Chatwin's six month visit to Patagonia - the southern tip of South America - undertaken on a whim, resulted in this book which established his reputation as a travel writer. John Updike described his writing style "as a clipped lapidary prose that compresses world into pages." There were to be other books but this, his first, which captures the essence of an extraordinary and remote corner of the world, is arguably his finest. Bruce Chatwin's account of his journey teems with evocative descriptions, remarkable bits of history, and unforgettable anecdotes.
Jonathan Cape, London, 1977. First edition, first printing. 8vo. A very clean bright copy in an unclipped dustwrapper with just a hint of wear to the spine extremities and corners.
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Henry Miller
Recommended by Bert Babcock, LLC, ABAA, Derry, NH
Henry Miller traveled and wrote about his experiences in Greece, which was suggested to him by his friend and fellow author Lawrence Durrell. Published in 1941 and arguably his finest work, The Colossus of Maroussi reads like a love letter to Greece.
First Edition. Tall 8vo burlap cloth spine and painted boards, with spine label. Though limitation is not stated, this is one of 100 copies signed by Miller on third flyleaf. Additionally, this copy is laid into a nice custom cloth folding box with leather spine stamped in gilt. Hardcover. Faint stains to front boards, corners lightly worn and few tiny scuffs to spine label. Otherwise an above-average and pleasing copy.
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Wilfred Thesiger
A true travel book classic. More than sixty years ago, Wilfred Thesiger journeyed among the nomadic camel-breeding peoples of Southern Arabia. He fell in love with the desert and the Bedouin. First published in 1954, this book is a vivid account of his experiences, rich in details of everyday life among the nomads and the physical environment they had inhabited for millennia.
New York. Viking Press. 12-1956. Limited, autographed edition., 1956. Illustrated throughout in full color and two color, full color endpapers, 54 pp, 12 1/2 x 9 inches, color pictorial green cloth-covered boards (hardbound) in red slipcase. Fine condition in slipcase that is rubbed and cracked along three joins with a very small old price sticker.
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Graham Greene
Graham Greene worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone during World War II. Afterward, he began wide ranging travels as a journalist. In 1938 he went to Mexico to investigate the aftermath of the brutal anti-clerical purges. Travelling through the tropical states of Chiapas and Tabasco, where all the churches had been closed or destroyed and the priests driven away or shot, he found an oppressed and impoverished people having to worship in secret. His experiences in Mexico provided the setting and theme for one of his greatest novels, The Power and the Glory.
London: Longmans, Green, 1939. First Edition; first binding. A very good copy in a very good dust jacket.
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