Dead Reckoning: Great Adventure Writing from the Golden Age of Exploration, 1800-1900

From Publishers Weekly
Whybrow shows up today's "extreme" adventurers in this hefty collection of 19th-century narratives. Before corporate sponsorship, before helicopter rescues, even before Sir Ernest Shackleton's famous voyage, people who explored the wilderness found endless wonder and danger. "Risk," Whybrow observes, "hardly had to be sought; it was part of the package." The years between 1800 and 1900 were unmatched for sheer exploratory guts and glory as exhibited by Europeans of a certain gender and race; this was the century when men were men, women were women and people of color were "the blacks." Each one of these 32 captivating narratives (grouped by theme into three sections) packs a big emotional punch, whether it's a horrifying tale of starvation and injury or an awestruck description of natural wonders. "Voyages of Discovery" highlights sponsored quests for worldly knowledge: Meriwether Lewis runs from a bear on the Missouri River, and John Wesley Powell runs the Grand Canyon's rapids. In "Personal Odysseys," Richard Henry Dana, Jr.'s well-known sea journey and Mrs. Alfred "Mary" Mummery's proto-feminist alpine expedition join the voyages of other passionate explorers seeking adventure on land and sea. "Lifelong Quests" features excerpts from the lives of obsessive explorers such as John Muir, Isabella Bird and Sven Hedin, the Swedish geographer whose 1899 attempt to reach Lhasa prompted him to write, "we had tasted the enchantment of the great adventure as never before." 30 illustrations Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
This anthology collects 35 examples of first-rate adventure writing from the nineteenth century, including excerpts from the Lewis and Clark journals, Mark Twain's Roughing It, and Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen's classic Farthest North. Editor Whybrow has culled accounts of journeys undertaken for personal, philosophical, or business reasons. She evinces an acute perception of the dramatic: quite a few of her choices involve narrow escapes from death, such as George Kennan's white-knuckler about his near shipwreck in the Sea of Okhotsk or alpinist Edward Whymper's tumble down the Matterhorn. Whybrow also picked several mountaineering stories by women and two by harbingers of the philosophy that nature was to be communed with rather than conquered: Henry David Thoreau (ruminating about Maine) and John Muir (ditto about Alaska). Such variety promises something to please every shade of taste for armchair adventure. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A collection of stories from the nineteenth century's most legendary voyages of discovery. For intensity of geographical exploration and wealth of first-rate adventure writing by intrepid men and women, the nineteenth century stands alone. This definitive collection contains thirty-five stories from the most compelling odysseys of the century: Fridtjof Nansen tries to walk to the North Pole; Mary Kingsley wanders alone in the jungles of West Africa; Richard Burton makes a forbidden pilgrimage to Mecca; Mary Mummery describes a harrowing first ascent in the Alps; Francis Parkman hunts buffalo with the Sioux. The excerpts are as varied as the voyages themselves—some humorous and lighthearted, others desperate and thrilling—but all are examples of adventure, and adventure writing, at the highest level. Several long-forgotten classics are reprinted here for the first time in one hundred years. From the search for the source of the Nile to the first crossing of the Himalayas to a quest for the origin of species, this book ranges the globe and captures the restlessness of the human spirit. 30 b/w illustrations.


About the Author
Helen Whybrow lives in Waitsfield, Vermont.


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Dense, comprehensive collection of 32 pieces on travel through the 19th century￯﾿ﾽs formidable wilds. "We chose the stories that most stirred our blood," admits editor Whybrow, who defines the golden age of exploration as running from the Napoleonic Wars￯﾿ﾽ end in 1815 to the beginning of WWI. She organizes this anthology into three thematic sections: "Voyages of Discovery" (straightforward exploration), "Personal Odysseys" (travel for livelihood or an individual mission), and "Lifelong Quests" (adventuring as a way of life). A sense of naive expansionism prevails in "Voyages of Discovery." Meriwether Lewis recalls viewing Montana￯﾿ﾽs great waterfalls ("second to but one in the known world") and harvesting their plentiful fish and game; William Wills provides grist for post-colonialist argument as he expresses bemusement toward "the blacks" (aborigines) who repeatedly aided his party during the harsh journey across Australia on which he ultimately starved to death. In contrast, "Personal Odysseys" provides intriguing interior viewpoints, often related to now-vanished avocations. Frank Bullen￯﾿ﾽs bracing seafaring tale depicts the terror of two years on the whaling ship Cachalot; eccentric John Voss is contentedly alone as he circumnavigates the globe in his modified canoe Tilikum. In "Lifelong Quests" we find foreshadowings of today￯﾿ﾽs "extreme travel" devotees in stories like that of Mary Kingsley, arguably the first Victorian woman to traverse West Africa (where she ultimately died from fever at age 38). Other thinker-adventurers whose writings add depth and texture here include George Kennan on Siberia, Mark Twain￯﾿ﾽs account of accidental pyromania from Roughing It, Robert Louis Stevenson￯﾿ﾽshumorous "Travels With a Donkey in the C￯﾿ﾽvennes," Henry David Thoreau￯﾿ﾽs "In the Maine Woods," and legendary mountaineer Edward Whymper on his ascent of the Matterhorn. Readers willing to contend with often elliptical 19th-century prose will be rewarded by multiple evocations of a challenging and untamed world.


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