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This series of essays by Archibald Little, a well-known Victorian expert on China, was published posthumously in 1910. Little, who first arrived in China as a tea taster for a German company, spent half a century living in Western China, and his affection for the Far East is evident in the romanticised tone of his work. Little's writings not only describe his life and travels in China, but also contain shrewd observations about the country's natural resources and commercial potential. The book is divided into four parts: 'Trade and Politics', 'Travel', 'Drama and Legend' and 'Religion and Philosophy', and the essays cover an eclectic range of topics, from 'How to register your trade mark' to a close analysis of traditional Chinese drama. Writing with an unmistakable sense of humour, Little exhibits a profound understanding of and empathy with the people of his adopted country.

Published posthumously in 1910, Archibald Little's memoir of his journey across the Yunnan Province in Southwest China was one of the first comprehensive accounts of the region to be published in English. Little, a skilled linguist, worked as a merchant in China for over fifty years and opened up the Upper Yangtze area to steam-powered commerce. He was well known for his intrepid travels into territories not yet explored by Westerners, and his record of this journey was originally published as a series of letters to the North China Herald. This book also contains Little's account of the building of the French Railway Line to Yunnan-Fu, which provided a trade route from India to the Upper Yangtze region. Across Yunnan was completed and edited by Little's wife after his death in 1908. The book includes a detailed map of the area and several photographs.

A London-born Wesleyan Methodist missionary, William Arthur Cornaby (1860-1921) spent over thirty years in China, where he edited The Chinese Christian Review, and, from 1905, the Ta Tung Pao, a weekly magazine targeted at Chinese officials and scholars. His many books on Chinese culture and civilisation, including A String of Chinese Peach-Stones (1895) and Rambles in Central China (1896), provide detailed sketches of Chinese rural life and customs. The later China Under the Search-Light, first published in 1901, uses Western cliches about China as a point of departure to offer a more nuanced understanding of the underlying facts and problems specific to Chinese society. In this book, Cornaby discusses contemporary topics such as overcrowding in Shanghai, mandarins, and Buddhism. He also scrutinises newspapers, novels, and aesthetic traditions, offering an elementary introduction to Chinese culture as perceived by a nineteenth-century British missionary.

First published in 1863, this is the enchanting account of the travels of George Fleming (1833-1901) in the far north of China. Fleming began his epic journey in Tien-tsin, where he was stationed as an army doctor at a British military garrison; there he was granted special permission to travel almost 700 miles as far as Moukden and to Manchu Tartary, the birth place of the Manchu dynasty. Fleming's route took him through many regions that had been inaccessible to western travellers until the Treaty of Tien-tsin (1858-1859). His vivid account describes the people and customs he met; the landscape; the climate; the language and dialects; the agricultural practices of the various regions; and the struggles and hardships he faced during his journey. Fleming's work is a monument of Victorian travel literature and an important source in understanding Victorian perceptions of China and of Chinese culture.

Part memoir, part travelogue, part crusade, Intimate China details the exploits of Alicia Little (Mrs Archibald Little), who first arrived in China as a new bride in 1887. Little was already a prolific writer before her marriage, and this narrative is both compelling and refreshingly frank. Published in 1899, her account of life in late nineteenth-century China is arranged eclectically, with chapters on 'Superstitions', 'Current coin in China' and 'Hindrances and annoyances' interlaced with descriptions of trips to Tibet and up the Yangtze. The latter third of the book is devoted entirely to politics. Fuelled with a determination to represent the Chinese 'as I have seen them', Little spares no details, supplying descriptions of the complications arising from foot-binding, a practice she found abhorrent and against which she actively campaigned. Extending to over six hundred pages and lavishly illustrated with maps and photographs, this is an extraordinary book.

Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was published in 1880 and recounts her travels in the Far East from 1876. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, before travelling to the Far East in order to strengthen herself to marry Dr John Bishop and live in Edinburgh. Created out of the letters Bird wrote home, primarily to her sister, Volume 1 recounts her experiences as a solo woman traveller living among the Japanese in Yokohama and Niigata. It includes descriptions of clothing, food and drink, education, housing, theatre, women's lifestyles, religion, plant life, medicine, shopping and other day-to-day activities, as well as the vicissitudes and excitement of the conditions and process of travelling, including by boat and pack-horse.

Isabella Bird's Unbeaten Tracks in Japan was published in 1880 and recounts her travels in the Far East, begun four years earlier. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the Sandwich Islands, before travelling to the Far East in order to strengthen herself to marry Dr John Bishop and live in Edinburgh. Based on the letters Bird wrote home, primarily to her sister, Volume 2 covers her journeys to Yeso, Tokyo, Kyoto, and the Ise Shrines, and includes her experiences of staying with the Hairy Ainu, the indigenous inhabitants of northern Japan. As with the first volume, it includes much detail of the lifestyles, customs, and habits of the people she encountered, as well as a chapter on Japanese public affairs.

Isabella Bishop (nee Bird) published Among the Tibetans in 1894 and recounts her adventures of five years earlier. Bird was recommended an open-air life from an early age as a cure for her physical and nervous difficulties. She had previously toured the United States and Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Sandwich Islands, and the Far East before her marriage to Dr John Bishop. After his death in 1886, Isabella resolved to travel again, although now for missionary purposes. She studied practical medicine at St Mary's Hospital in London and was baptised in a ceremony of total immersion. She travelled to India and Tibet in 1889, both visiting medical missions and embarking on the journey into Ladakh on horseback and by houseboat, camping and living among the natives. The book recounts her observations of day-to-day life in the area, as well as its politics and environment.

In 1792, a British embassy headed by Earl Macartney travelled from Peking (Beijing), China, to Canton (Guangzou) with the aim of improving trade with China. The complete account of the mission was recorded by the Earl's private secretary, Sir John Barrow, in Travels in China (1804), a work intended to 'shew this extraordinary people in their proper colours' as well as to 'divest the court of the tinsel and tawdry varish' which Barrow thought that missionary accounts promoted. Both a paean to British imperial ambitions and a compelling example of early nineteenth-century travel literature, Travels in China presents an account of Chinese government, trade, industry, and cultural and religious practices through the eyes of one of England's most ardent expansionists. Barrow would go on to write an account of the mutiny on H.M.S. Bounty (1831), but Travels in China remained by far the more significant work in his lifetime.

Thomas Wright Blakiston (1832-1891) was an army officer, explorer and naturalist who served with the British forces in Ireland, Nova Scotia and the Crimea before being posted to Canton during the second Opium War in 1859. While in Canton, Blakiston organised an expedition up the Yangtsze river and Five Months on the Yang-tsze (1862) is his account of his experiences navigating 'one of the greatest rivers in the world a distance of eighteen hundred miles'. Despite the region being subject to extensive insurgency, Blakiston was able to travel 900 miles further up the river than any European before him except Jesuits wearing local attire. His narrative, divided into nineteen chapters with illustrations by Alfred Barton, contains many observations relating to the politically volatile situation in China as well as descriptions of the local landscape, flora and fauna. It remained the standard account of the region for fifty years.

H. R. Davies (1865-1950) was an English army officer and member of the British intelligence service. Between 1894 and 1900 he was asked by the British government to lead survey expeditions into the modern Chinese province of Yunnan to discover possible routes for a railway connecting British-occupied Burma with the upper Yangtze river and through to Sichuan. This book contains an account of his travels though Yunnan province, written as a travelogue and first published in 1909. The region had been little explored by westerners before Davies' expeditions, and this is the first detailed description of Yunnan from a European traveller. The society, diverse indigenous cultures, geography, economy and political situation of the province are described in detail, with an introductory three chapters on the political context of the expeditions, and on railway construction in south-east Asia in the late nineteenth century.

The journal of Augustus Raymond Margary's groundbreaking journey from Hankow in the Hubei province of central China, to Bhamo in Upper Burma was published in 1875, soon after his death. Margary was part of the Chinese consular service and had lived in China since 1867, working as an interpreter. This journal begins in August 1874 at the start of his journey, the purpose of which was to meet Colonel Horace Browne to act as his interpreter as he attempted to open an overland trade route between China and India. Margary was the first Englishman successfully to complete the 1,800 mile trip through Szechwan to Yunnan, doing so in six months. On the return trip, he and two servants made a diversion, hearing of danger on his proposed route, but were murdered in the town of Manwyne, leading to public outrage and commemorative publication of accounts of his life and travels.

In 1873, the Christian missionary Isabelle Williamson set out from Chefoo (Yantai),China, to spread the gospel to Chinese women. Her four separate journeys along the ancient roads of Shandong Province and Beijing are recorded in Old Highways in China (1884), a chronicle of the everyday lives of the women to whom she preached. 'My interest was chiefly in the women', Williamson explains, 'and I looked at all through a woman's eyes'. Reserving her missionary work for another publication, Williamson devotes this keenly observed book to the details of life in the villages she visited - the work, play, rituals, and stories of women and girls. It also describes Williamson's own remarkable travels, set against the stunning natural backdrop of northern China. An important witness to women's missionary work in China, her book is also testament to the intelligent eye of its author as she seeks to portray 'China's daughters'.

Emily Eden's childhood prepared her well for her role as companion to her brother, the Governor-General of India, but the observant and sharp-tongued Eden (1797-1869) never censored her letters for the sake of diplomacy. This two-volume collection, edited by her niece Eleanor Eden, was published posthumously in 1872.

Alexander Williamson (1829-90) was a Scottish missionary and agent of the National Bible Society of Scotland. This learned and discursive two-volume travelogue, first published in 1870, records his observations during extensive travels that took him through northern China, Mongolia and Manchuria while propagating the Bible in Chinese script.

French explorer, author and legislator Gabriel Bonvalot (1853-1933) undertook several expeditions to Central Asia. This two-volume work, published in 1891, tells of Bonvalot's journey across Europe and Asia to French Indochina in 1889-90. In Volume 1 the expedition reaches Tibet via Russia and Siberia, despite arduous travelling conditions.

Isabella Bird (Mrs Bishop, 1831-1904) wrote best-selling travel books on America, Hawaii, the Far East and Persia. This two-volume work, published in 1898, arose from Bird's travels in Korea and China between 1894 and 1897. She provides vivid descriptions of the Korean people, their way of life and customs.

In 1676, Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1605-89), French merchant, traveller and pioneer of trade with India, published an account of his journey through India. This two-volume translation, published in 1889 by Irish geologist Valentine Ball (1843-94), includes a biographical sketch of the author, notes and appendices.

Norwegian explorer Carl Lumholtz (1851-1922) wrote the influential ethnographic studies Among Cannibals and Unknown Mexico after his journeys through Australia and Mexico. This two-volume account of his last expedition was originally published in 1920. Volume 1 includes an overview of Borneo and details of the ceremonies of native tribes.

This two-volume 1844 work is a memoir of the tour of duty of Captain Arthur Cunynghame (1812-84) in China as aide-de-camp to Major-General Lord Saltoun, Commander of the East India Company's troops there. His observations of 'a country that is so strange and new to all Europe' are fascinating.

James Silk Buckingham (1786-1855) was a writer who travelled extensively and published accounts of his adventures in places such as India, Persia, Egypt, and Palestine. He served as an M.P., and was a supporter of political and social reforms. His two volumes of autobiography appeared in 1855.

Published in 1895, these two volumes contain Henry Morton Stanley's early journalistic writings during his travels in America and Asia from 1867 to 1869. Stanley is best-known for his subsequent African explorations, but these early works reveal much about his character and future ambitions.

The Book of Ser Marco Polo is an edition of the famous travelogue describing the travels of Marco Polo through Asia, Persia, China and Indonesia between 1271 and 1291. It was edited by the prominent nineteenth-century geographer Henry Yule and was considered an authoritative source on Polo's travels.

Eden's candid but sensitive account of three years in India represents the experiences of thousands of women who endured dusty bonnets and darned crinolines to accompany fathers and husbands to the furthest outposts of the British Empire. Volume 1 takes readers from London to Calcutta via sea voyages and monsoons.

William Gill was an explorer and officer in the Royal Engineers, who used his large inheritance to finance explorations of remote countries. This two volume work, published in 1880, describes his expedition from Sichuan along the eastern Tibetan border to Burma. Volume 1 focuses on the area around Chengdu, China.

Emma Roberts' three-volume work, published in 1835, engagingly covers a wide variety of aspects of India's social, political, religious, and domestic culture, as well its natural history. Written at the height of the East India Company's power, this is an important resource for researchers of colonialism or women's writing.

A pioneering piece of travel writing, Anne Katharine Elwood's Narrative of a Journey Overland (1830) describes sights from cathedrals to pyramids, and deserts to termites. Volume 1 covers her journey to Bombay via France, Italy and Egypt, and constitutes a unique account of interest to travellers and historians alike.

Narrating in detail grand events and quotidian anecdotes, and observing religious practices and customs, Francois Bernier provides a Eurocentric perspective on northern India, its people, and its places. Brock's interventions as translator affirm that perspective while drawing attention to Britain's presence in India and adding explanatory details to Bernier's account.

In 1755, naturalist Stepan Krasheninnikov published this account of an expedition to Kamchatka in 1733-43 to extend scientific and geographical knowledge of eastern lands. Published in English translation in 1764, the work is a fascinating and detailed account of a huge area virtually unknown to the western world.

The Carmelite missionary Paolino da San Bartolomeo (1748-1806) arrived in India in 1776. A noted orientalist, he was among the first to note the relationship between Sanskrit and European languages. Published in 1800, this English translation of a 1796 work presents his observations on Indian geography, language and culture.