Travelers’ Tales Classics

Travelers’ Tales, a San Francisco-based publisher of experiential travel literature, is pleased to announce a new series – Travelers’ Tales Classics – presenting long-lost favorites in travel literature ready to be shared with a whole new audience. According to the publisher, “Travelers’ Tales Classics are books we love, tales which have dazzled, moved, and changed us–but which have long been unavailable. These stories remain vibrant and relevant, especially with the ever-growing interest today in travel narratives.”

James O’Reilly, publisher, and Larry Habegger, executive editor, commented: “As much as we are life-long travelers, we are also life-long bookworms, and in the course of reading and researching our anthologies and our own trips, we have fallen in love with many an out-of-print book of lasting value. Travelers’ Tales Classics will bring back into the sunshine unforgettable travel tales of the past.”

To launch the series, Travelers’ Tales presents two wonderful writers and adventurers, Richard Halliburton and Isabella Bird. A whole generation of readers grew up on Halliburton, one of the premier travel writers of his time – lauded by all for his impetuous, zany spirit, and remarkable skill as a storyteller. The Royal Road to Romance, originally published in 1925, chronicles what happens when – after graduating from Princeton – Halliburton chooses adventure over a career, traveling the world with almost no money.

Bird stands out as the foremother of women travel writers – on multiple levels she dared to go where no one else had gone before. Unbeaten Tracks in Japanis a classic tale from 1880, one of pioneering adventure and spunk. Written during a time when women did not travel alone and Japan was still mysterious to most, this is a groundbreaking book.

Both The Royal Road to Romance and Unbeaten Tracks in Japan will be published in the fall of 2000. In the spring of 2001, Travelers’ Tales Classics will publish Leonard Clark’s 1953 Amazonian adventure, Rivers Ran East.

Praise for Travelers’ Tales Classics

“If you’ve ever dreamed of taking a slow boat to China, the Travelers’ Tales Classics series should be by your armchair of in your backpack.”
— Playboy Magazine

“No mountain in the world will ever be so remote as the ones they climbed, no river so sacred, no city such a brilliant mystery.