Several forthcoming titles show how people explored the world in decades and centuries past, from a 17th-century woman’s travels across England on horseback to a Chinese-born professor observing life in mid-20th-century New York City.
A Barbarian in Asia
Henri Michaux, trans. by Sylvia Beach
New Directions, Mar.
French poet and painter Michaux, who died in 1984, recounts his travels in India, China, Japan, and other areas of the East in 1930–1931. New Directions first published this translation, by Shakespeare & Company bookstore founder Sylvia Beach, in 1949.
The Magic Island
William Seabrook
Dover, Mar.
Originally published in 1929, this book by explorer Seabrook tells of his experience in Haiti and his encounter with various occult practices there. According to a Vice article, Seabrook “did more than anybody else to make zombies fodder for horror films and literature in the 1930s.”
Breaking Ground
Hesperus Classics, Mar.
This collection of writings by women explorers spans three centuries and several continents, with entries from such figures as Celia Fiennes, who traversed England on horseback in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, and May Kellogg Sullivan, who traveled to the gold-mining regions of Alaska and the Yukon Valley at the turn of the 20th century.
The Silent Traveller in New York
Chiang Yee
Applewood, May
This book, originally published in 1950, is one of a dozen Silent Traveller books written and illustrated by Yee from 1937 to 1972; the Chinese-born artist, calligrapher, and Columbia University professor died in 1977. Applewood Books will publish two more from the series—The Silent Traveller in Boston and The Silent Traveller in San Francisco—in July.
American Daredevil
Cathryn J. Prince
Chicago Review, June
Journalist Prince examines the life of explorer Richard Halliburton, whose various adventures—he was the first to swim across the Panama Canal and shot the first aerial photographs of Mount Everest—made him a media darling during the 1920s and ’30s.
