A collection of out-of-copyright and rare books from the Cambridge University Library and other world-class institutions that have been digitally scanned, made available online, and reprinted in paperback.
A collection of out-of-copyright and rare books from the Cambridge University Library and other world-class institutions that have been digitally scanned, made available online, and reprinted in paperback.
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In this nine-volume work, published between 1812 and 1815, the author and publisher John Nichols (1745–1826) provides biographical notes on publishers, writers and artists of the eighteenth century, and also gives 'an incidental view of the progress and advancement of literature in this kingdom during the last century'. (A shorter version had been published in 1782.) His subjects range from the publisher William Bowyer to Henry Fielding and Horace Walpole, and also include histories of individual publishing houses and of genres such as lexicography. The work remains a useful source of biographical material on authors and publishers at a period when many of the literary genres we take for granted, such as the novel, the autobiography and the analytical history, were first being developed. Volume 2 includes memoirs of Richard Farmer and George Steevens, and a history of Bowyer's press from 1732 to 1765.
This collection of literary essays by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94) explores the lives and works of nine writers from around the world and across the centuries, including Victor Hugo, Robert Burns, Walt Whitman and Samuel Pepys. Published together in 1882, the studies here had previously appeared in periodicals, chiefly the Cornhill Magazine, and are known for their conversational style and unusual combination of character assessment and scholarly critique. In his preface, Stevenson describes the book as 'the readings of a literary vagrant', emphasising that the essays were inspired by a genuine personal interest in the authors and their works. Over the course of his own career as a writer, Stevenson published in a wide range of literary forms and genres. Today this collection reveals much about the diversity of his influences and tastes, as well as offering an insight into his moral and aesthetic values.
The author and artist Sarah Lee (1791–1856) was a remarkable traveller and scientist in her own right. With her first husband, Thomas Bowdich, she explored the flora, fauna and local culture of the Asante region and Gabon in west Africa. The pair then went in 1819 to Paris, to study zoology under the famous Cuvier, in preparation for another trip to Africa. They financed their stay by translating French scientific books into English, and became close friends of Cuvier himself. Their second expedition proved a disaster, as Thomas Bowdich died in 1824, leaving Sarah alone in Africa with three small children. She made her way back to England, and made her living from scientific translation and her own writings. This biography of her mentor was published in 1833, shortly after his death, and remained the authoritative work in English on the most distinguished scientist of the age.
Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877) and his wife Mary (1809–98) were born into literary and musical circles which deeply shaped their careers and supplied lifelong friendships with great artists and writers. Among Charles's closest school friends was John Keats, and his acquaintances later included William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, Coleridge and the Shelleys. Mary's childhood introduction to Charles and Mary Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare led to a lifetime of Shakespearean scholarship, friendship with the Lambs, and her performance in several Shakespearean roles for the amateur company run by Charles Dickens. Wed in 1828, the Cowden Clarkes were, as Mary writes, 'among the happiest of married lovers for more than forty-eight years', publishing jointly and enjoying mutual friendships. Their insightful recollections of their literary friends, first published serially towards the end of Charles's life, were afterwards collected by Mary, together with many important letters, and published in this 1878 work.
On 14 December 1911, Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) and his Norwegian team became the first humans to reach the South Pole, a month before their ill-fated British rivals under the leadership of Robert Falcon Scott. Reissued here is the 1912 English translation of Amundsen's two-volume account of how this extraordinary and perilous feat was achieved. Illustrated throughout with illuminating maps and photographs, the text contains important details relating to matters of climate, equipment, diet, sledging and survival in forbiddingly cold conditions over uncertain terrain. Underpinning Amundsen's success, the use of dogs, skis and fur clothing made possible the dash to the pole and back without the loss of human life. While careful to present the expedition in the best light, Amundsen's work remains essential reading in the history of Antarctic exploration. Volume 1 covers the early stages of the expedition prior to the start for the pole in October 1911.
On 14 December 1911, Roald Amundsen (1872–1928) and his Norwegian team became the first humans to reach the South Pole, a month before their ill-fated British rivals under the leadership of Robert Falcon Scott. Reissued here is the 1912 English translation of Amundsen's two-volume account of how this extraordinary and perilous feat was achieved. Illustrated throughout with illuminating maps and photographs, the text contains important details relating to matters of climate, equipment, diet, sledging and survival in forbiddingly cold conditions over uncertain terrain. Underpinning Amundsen's success, the use of dogs, skis and fur clothing made possible the dash to the pole and back without the loss of human life. While careful to present the expedition in the best light, Amundsen's work remains essential reading in the history of Antarctic exploration. Volume 2 covers the momentous journey to the pole and back, closing with chapters and appendices on nautical and scientific topics.
The Royal Academician Charles Leslie (1794–1859) also wrote biographies of fellow painters. His life of John Constable and a two-volume work on Sir Joshua Reynolds are also reissued in this series. On his death, the Reynolds work was completed by the journalist and dramatist Tom Taylor (1817–80), who also edited Leslie's two-volume autobiography, published in 1860. Though born in London, Leslie was an American, a child prodigy in drawing, who returned to Britain in 1811 to study painting with Benjamin West and Washington Allston. He had enormous admiration for the paintings of his contemporaries and of the previous generation, and his reminiscences are intended to preserve 'some recollections of those chiefly whom I could praise'. Volume 2 of this lively and self-deprecating work, full of good-humoured anecdotes, consists of extensive extracts from Leslie's letters and an appendix listing his paintings.
The German artist Johann David Passavant (1787–1861) visited Britain in 1831 in order to examine works by Raphael in private and public galleries for a book he was preparing. He had not been able to find any helpful German accounts of British collections, and so decided to publish a narrative of his own travels and observations. The British writer and art critic Elizabeth Rigby (later Lady Eastlake) produced a two-volume translation in 1836, believing that English readers would benefit from Passavant's descriptions of little-known collections in their own country, as well as from his practitioner's response to the works themselves. Volume 1 covers the National Gallery, the Royal Academy and the royal collections at Buckingham and Kensington Palaces, Windsor Castle and Hampton Court, as well as the private galleries of aristocrats and wealthy commoners in London and the home counties, ending with the colleges of Oxford.
The Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg (1743–1828), a physician and pupil of Linnaeus, carried out his most important work in South Africa and Japan. Having studied in Amsterdam and Leiden, he was asked to go plant-hunting in areas where the Dutch East India Company's trading activities were opening up territory for scientific exploration. In 1771 he travelled to South Africa as a ship's doctor, spending three years searching for, classifying and propagating plants, while at the same time becoming fluent in Dutch, as only the Dutch were allowed to enter Japan, his ultimate destination. Having acquired many Japanese specimens, he continued his travels and returned to Sweden in 1779. Three fascicles of this influential reference work in Latin on the South African flora were issued between 1807 and 1813. Reissued here is the full version edited by the Austrian botanist Josef August Schultes (1773–1831) and published in 1823.
This seminal publication began life as a collaborative effort between the Irish botanist William Henry Harvey (1811–66) and his German counterpart Otto Wilhelm Sonder (1812–81). Relying on many contributors of specimens and descriptions from colonial South Africa - and building on the foundations laid by Carl Peter Thunberg, whose Flora Capensis (1823) is also reissued in this series - they published the first three volumes between 1860 and 1865. These were reprinted unchanged in 1894, and from 1896 the project was supervised by William Thiselton-Dyer (1843–1928), director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. A final supplement appeared in 1933. Reissued now in ten parts, this significant reference work catalogues more than 11,500 species of plant found in South Africa. Volume 6 comprises sections that were published individually between 1896 and 1897, covering Haemodoraceae to Liliaceae.
The publisher and writer Charles Knight (1791–1873) was apprenticed to his printer father, but later became a journalist and then proprietor of various periodicals and magazines, many of which were driven by his concern for the education of the poor. As an author, he published a variety of works, including The Old Printer and the Modern Press (also reissued in this series). He claimed that this six-volume work on the architecture and history of London, published between 1841 and 1844, was neither a history nor a survey of London, but looked 'at the Present through the Past, and at the Past through the Present'. It relies on the skills of eminent artists to bring both the present and the past of London to life, and is arranged thematically rather than chronologically or geographically. This is a fascinating account of what was then the greatest city in the world.
The writer Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) was famous for her poems and essays, her writings for children (she and her husband ran a school), and for her edition of the correspondence of Samuel Richardson (also reissued in this series). The sister of John Aikin, the physician and writer, she moved in the dissenting circle of the Warrington Academy, where her father was a teacher: Joseph Priestley was a close friend. This two-volume edition of some of her poems and prose works was compiled by her niece Lucy Aikin (also a writer), and published soon after her death in 1825. The wit, elegance and deep feeling of Barbauld's works led to her being regarded as one of the most important writers of the early Romantic period. Volume 2 contains a selection of Barbauld's letters, and essays on a variety of topics, from literature to politics.
Replete with detailed engravings, this four-volume catalogue was published to accompany the International Exhibition of 1862. Held in South Kensington from May to November, the exhibition showcased the progress made in a diverse range of crafts, trades and industries since the Great Exhibition of 1851. Over 6 million visitors came to view the wares of more than 28,000 exhibitors from Britain, her empire and beyond. Featuring explanatory notes and covering such fields as mining, engineering, textiles, printing and photography, this remains an instructive resource for social and economic historians. The exhibition's Illustrated Record, its Popular Guide and the industrial department's one-volume Official Catalogue have all been reissued in this series. Volume 4 continues to catalogue the Foreign Division. Notable is the appearance of early exhibits from Steinway & Sons in the brief section for the United States. In contrast, Austrian and German exhibits occupy more than 400 pages.
Philip Henry Gosse (1810–88) is best remembered today for the portrait given by his son Edmund in his autobiographical Father and Son. In his own day, he was famous as a natural historian, and his books were extremely popular. (His Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica is also reissued in this series.) In 1857, Gosse moved from London to Devon, where he spent the rest of his life. This 1865 book offers essays about various aspects of the geography and natural history of the West Country. There are some digressions (one chapter is on the woods of Jamaica), and reminders of the two great Victorian crazes, for ferns and for seashore life, which Gosse's writings partly instigated. In his final essay, on Dartmoor, is an appendix which argues that Britain is the biblical Tarshish - a reminder that Gosse was also a fundamentalist Christian who struggled with many aspects of contemporary science.
In August 1913, the explorer and scientist Fridtjof Nansen (1861–1930), who later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, set off from Norway to find a sea route across the north of the Eurasian continent. This 'north-east passage' had been the goal of explorers since the sixteenth century, but Nansen's object, as he puts it, was 'to open up a regular trade connexion with the interior of Siberia, via the Kara Sea and the mouth of the Yenisei'. By the time the book was published in English translation in 1914, the First World War had begun, and the need for ways to keep supplies and troops moving between Russia and her western allies made it even more timely. Nansen's delightfully written account of 'the land of the future' remains of value to anyone seeking to find out more about the geography, resources, and native peoples of Siberia.