The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African, first published in 1789, is the autobiography of Olaudah Equiano. The narrative is argued to be a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel narrative, and spiritual narrative. The book describes Equiano's time spent in enslavement, and documents his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his own freedom and in business thereafter.

This “stimulating contribution to literary theory” reveals the deeply philosophical concerns and developments behind popular time travel sci-fi (London Review of Books). In Time Travel, literary theorist David Wittenberg argues that time travel fiction is not mere escapism, but a narrative “laboratory” where theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity—are presented in story form. Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, Wittenberg links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from nineteenth-century evolutionary biology to twentieth-century quantum physics and more recent “multiverse” cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how popular awareness of new science led to surprising innovations in the literary “time machine,” which evolved from a vehicle used for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological device capable of exploring the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events. Time Travel draws on classic works of science fiction by H. G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Robert Heinlein, Samuel Delany, and Harlan Ellison, television shows such as “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” and other popular entertainments. These are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, Stephen Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.

A friend of Charles Darwin and a social activist respected by John Stuart Mill, Alfred R. Wallace (1823-1913) was an outstanding nineteenth-century intellectual. Wallace, renowned in his time as the co-discoverer of natural selection, was a young schoolteacher when he began his exciting career as an explorer-naturalist, and set off for Brazil in 1848 with Henry Walter Bates. A Narrative of Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1853) is the stimulating and engaging result of this first expedition and a precursor to his best-selling Malay Archipelago (1869). The depth and breadth of Wallace's observations in this book as naturalist, anthropologist and geologist are remarkable, and it is tantalising to learn that half his notes and 'the greater part of [his] collections and sketches' were lost at sea when his ship was burned on his voyage home.

Alexander von Humboldt's account of his monumental scientific expedition to South America and Cuba. Originally published in French between 1814 and 1825, this is the first edition in English ... This classic of scientific exploration was based on the researches of Humboldt and his companion, Aimé Bonpland, during their five-year excursion in South and Central America from 1799 to 1804. The volumes describe the voyage from Spain and the stop in the Canaries; Tobago and the first steps in South America; explorations along the Orinoco; Colombia and the area around Caracas; explorations in the northern Andes; and a visit to Cuba. "Humboldt and Bonpland traveled widely through South and Central America, studying meteorological phenomena and exploring wild and uninhabited country. At Callao, Humboldt measured the temperatures of the ocean current which came to bear his name ..."--Hill.

IT was on the morning of the 26th of May, 1848, that after a short passage of twenty-nine days from Liverpool, we came to anchor opposite the southern entrance to the River Amazon, and obtained our first view of South America. In the afternoon the pilot came on board, and the next morning we sailed with a fair wind up the river, which for fifty miles could only be distinguished from the ocean by its calmness and discoloured water, the northern shore being invisible, and the southern at a distance of ten or twelve miles. Early on the morning of the 28th we again anchored; and when the sun rose in a cloudless sky, the city of Pará, surrounded by the dense forest, and overtopped by palms and plantains, greeted our sight, appearing doubly beautiful from the presence of those luxuriant tropical productions in a state of nature, which we had so often admired in the conservatories of Kew and Chatsworth. The canoes passing with their motley crews of Negroes and Indians, the vultures soaring overhead or walking lazily about the beach, and the crowds of swallows on the churches and house-tops, all served to occupy our attention till the Custom-house officers visited us, and we were allowed to go on shore. Pará contains about 15,000 inhabitants, and does not cover a great extent of ground; yet it is the largest city on the greatest river in the world, the Amazon, and is the capital of a province equal in extent to all Western Europe. It is the residence of a President appointed by the Emperor of Brazil, and of a Bishop whose see extends two thousand miles into the interior, over a country peopled by countless tribes of unconverted Indians. The province of Pará is the most northern portion of Brazil, and though it is naturally the richest part of that vast empire, it is the least known, and at present of the least commercial importance. The appearance of the city from the river, which is the best view that can be obtained of it, is not more foreign than that of Calais or Boulogne. The houses are generally white, and several handsome churches and public buildings raise their towers and domes above them. The vigour of vegetation is everywhere apparent. The ledges and mouldings support a growth of small plants, and from the wall-tops and window-openings of the churches often spring luxuriant weeds and sometimes small trees. Above and below and behind the city, as far as the eye can reach, extends the unbroken forest; all the small islands in the river are wooded to the water's edge, and many sandbanks flooded at high-water are covered with shrubs and small trees, whose tops only now appeared above the surface. The general aspect of the trees was not different from those of Europe, except where the "feathery palm-trees" raised their graceful forms; but our imaginations were busy picturing the wonderful scenes to be beheld in their dark recesses, and we longed for the time when we should be at liberty to explore them.