Title: Journey to the East Indies and Asia
Description: As the British Empire extended its reach around the globe in the nineteenth century, explores of these foreign lands returned home to publish compelling narratives bursting with tales of derring-do in exotic locales surrounded by equally exotic people. In Victorian-era Britain, armchair travelers relished these tales, even though, as pointed out in a Guardian interview with the literary historian Robin Jarvis, "the writing wasn't always very accomplished ..., partly because these adventurers weren't necessarily from the best-educated echelons of society." The volumes in this collection take readers to Central Asia, Manchurian, across the Gobi Desert, and throughout India; places which must have seemed as distant as the moon for the majority of people living in the United Kingdom during the nineteenth century. The explorer Alexander Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, which details his adventures in Central Asia, was a sensation when it was published in London in 1834. Other books document various aspects of British imperial expansion, such as Telegraph and trave: a narrative of the formation and development of telegraphic communication between England and India, which also contains a detailed, full-color map showing the routes taken by Colonel Sir F.J. Goldsmid in Asiatic Turkey, Persia, and Baluchistant from December 1861 to September 1872. The books in this small collection document the world-- and imagination-expanding effects of trade and travel between the United Kingdom, the East Indies, and Asia.
Subjects: Travel
Places: Asia, East Indies