Bücher der Reihe Cambridge Library Collection - Travel, Europe

The romantic novelist Elizabeth Strutt (1783-c.1863) published this guidebook for the unaccompanied 'lady traveller' in 1828. Strutt's carefully-observed account of an eventful journey provides an unusual perspective both on European customs and society of her time, and on the mindset of the British travellers who witnessed them.

Mariana Starke's Travels in Italy (1802) is one of the best-loved travel guides of the nineteenth century. Volume 1 gives a detailed account of the political situation after Napoleon's first Italian campaigns and offers practical guidance for tourists visiting the major cultural sites and artistic treasures of the country.

The writer, satirist and poet Lady Mary Wortley Montagu had an inexhaustible appetite for travel and society. This third edition of her Letters and Works (1866), offers valuable insight into the ambitions and frustrations of one of the most unconventional women of the eighteenth century.

Targeted at both travellers and 'readers at home', Richard Ford's 1845 account of Spanish history, topography and culture combines the rigour of a gazetteer with the humour and pace of a private travel diary. Volume 1 leads the reader from Cadiz in Andalucia to Granada and on to Catalonia.

The social world of 'dandy' Thomas Raikes (1777-1848) included some of the most influential people of his day. Raikes was best known for his diaries, extracts from which were published in four volumes from 1856 to 1857. Volume 1 covers 1832-4, encompassing the Reform Act and Irish unrest.

Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (1789-1849), was famous for her charm and wit, which are reflected in this three-volume travel narrative, first published in 1839-40. Volume 1 contains anecdotes from France and Switzerland and ends with the author's encounter with Lord Byron in Genoa.

The American zoologist, physiologist and naturalist Samuel Kneeland (1821-88) published this account of his travels through the Scottish islands and to Iceland in 1876. It shows the breadth of his interests, from the Norse origins and history of the Icelanders to volcanoes, their geological causes, and their flora and fauna.

Published in 1895, this book documents William Conway's celebrated 65-day journey across the European Alps in 1894. Accompanied by two Gurkha soldiers, Conway climbed twenty-one peaks, including Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau and Grossglockner, and traversed thirty-nine mountain passes.

In this 1842 work, the artist and zoologist George French Angas (1822-86) blends antiquarian notes on temples and castles with picturesque descriptions of natural history. Incorporating fourteen illustrations, this book displays the charm and diversity that defines the best nineteenth-century travel writing.

First published in English in 1861, during the golden age of alpinism and travel writing, this work by Hermann Alexander Berlepsch (1814?-83) was translated from German by Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), a renowned British mountaineer in his day. The book is a scientific and cultural guidebook to the Alps.

The radical writer and poet Helen Maria Williams (1759-1827) is best remembered for her eight-volume Letters from France (1790-6). First published in 1798, this two-volume political travelogue covers the journeys she made in Switzerland with John Hurford Stone following her flight from France in 1794.