Travel - Recent Titles from Ohio University Press

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson

Fri, 15 Jun 2007

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson (2007)
Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body

By Oliver S. Buckton

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson: Travel, Narrative, and the Colonial Body is the first booklength study about the influence of travel on Robert Louis Stevenson’s writings, both fiction and nonfiction. Within the contexts of late-Victorian imperialism and ethnographic discourse, the book offers original close readings of individual works by Stevenson while bringing new theoretical insights to bear on the relationship between travel, authorship, and gender identity in the Victorian fin de siècle.

Oliver S. Buckton develops “cruising” as a critical term, linking Stevenson’s leisurely mode of travel with the striking narrative motifs of disruption and fragmentation that characterize his writings. Buckton traces the development of Stevenson’s career from his early travel books to show how Stevenson’s major works of fiction, such as Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and The Ebb-Tide, draw on innovative techniques and materials Stevenson acquired in the course of his global travels.

Exploring Stevenson’s pivotal role in the revival of “romance” in the late nineteenth century, Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson highlights Stevenson’s treatment of the human body as part of his resistance to realism, arguing that the energies and desires released by travel are often routed through disturbingly resistant or darkly comic corporeal figures. Buckton gives extensive attention to Stevenson’s writing about the South Seas, arguing that his groundbreaking critiques of European colonialism are formed in awareness of the fragility and desirability of Polynesian bodies and island landscapes.

Cruising with Robert Louis Stevenson will be indispensable to all admirers of Stevenson as well as of great interest to readers of travel writing, Victorian ethnography, gender studies, and literary criticism.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Cruising+with+Robert+Louis+Stevenson.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Colonial Rosary

Mon, 12 Jun 2006

Colonial Rosary (2006)
The Spanish and Indian Missions of California

By Alison Lake

California would be a different place today without the imprint of Spanish culture and the legacy of Indian civilization. The colonial Spanish missions that dot the coast and foothills between Sonoma and San Diego are relics of a past that transformed California’s landscape and its people.

In a spare and accessible style, Colonial Rosary looks at the complexity of California’s Indian civilization and the social effects of missionary control. While oppressive institutions lasted in California for almost eighty years under the tight reins of royal Spain, the Catholic Church, and the government of Mexico, letters and government documents reveal the missionaries’ genuine concern for the Indian communities they oversaw for their health, spiritual upbringing, and material needs.

With its balanced attention to the variety of sources on the mission period, Colonial Rosary illuminates ongoing debates over the role of the Franciscan missions in the settlement of California.

By sharing the missions’ stories of tragedy and triumph, author Alison Lake underlines the importance of preserving these vestiges of California’s prestatehood period. An illustrated tour of the missions as well as a sensitive record of their impact on California history and culture, Colonial Rosary brings the story of the Spanish missions of California alive.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Colonial+Rosary.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Switzerland

Tue, 29 Jun 2004

Switzerland (2004)
A Village History

By David Birmingham

Switzerland: A Village History is an account of an Alpine village that illuminates the broader history of Switzerland and its rural, local underpinnings. It begins with the colonization of the Alps by Romanized Celtic peoples who came from the plain to clear the wilderness, establish a tiny monastic house, and create a dairy economy that became famous for its cheeses. Over ten centuries the village, like the rest of Switzerland, went through the traumas of religious reformation and political revolution. A single currency, a unified postal service, and eventually an integrated army brought improved stability and prosperity to the union of two dozen small republics.

Yet Switzerland's enduring foundation remains the three thousand boroughs to which the Swiss people feel they truly belong. In Switzerland: A Village History, distinguished scholar David Birmingham tells the story of his childhood village-Château-d'Oex-where records of cheesemaking date to 1328. The evolution of this ancient grazing and forest economy included the rise of the legal profession to keep track of complex deeds, grazing allotments, and animal rights-of-way. Switzerland's eventual privatization of communal grazing land drove many highlanders to emigrate to the European plains and overseas to the Americas. The twentieth century brought wealth from foreign tourism to Switzerland, punctuated by austerities imposed by Europe's wars. Alpine peasants were integrated into Swiss union society and began at last to share in some of the prosperity flowing from urban industry.

Switzerland: A Village History replaces the mythology and patriotic propaganda that too often have passed for Swiss history with a rigorous, insightful, and charming account of the daily life, small-scale rivalries, and local loyalties that actually make up Swiss history.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Switzerland.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Follow the Blue Blazes

Thu, 01 May 2003

Follow the Blue Blazes (2003)
A Guide to Hiking Ohio's Buckeye Trail

By Robert J. Pond

Unique among hiking trails is the one that forms a complete loop around the state of Ohio. That 1,200-mile trail is called the Buckeye Trail. Showing the way on tree trunks, rocks, and other natural signposts are the blue painted markings called “the blue blazes.” In Follow the Blue Blazes, the reader embarks on a journey to discover a part of Ohio largely unseen except along this great path.

Beginning with the startling rock formations and graceful waterfalls of Old Man’s Cave in southern Ohio, and leading clockwise around the state to visit expansive forests, lovely parks, ancient mounds, historic canals and battlefields, and scenic river trails, experienced trailsman Robert J. Pond provides a captivating look at each section of the trail.

Each chapter features an overview of a 100-mile section of the trail and three self-guided featured hikes. The overviews, with accompanying maps, may be read consecutively to acquaint the reader with the entire course of the blue blazes. But most readers will best enjoy the Buckeye Trail by taking the guide along on featured hikes. Each hike is supported by a detailed but easy-to-follow map and includes explicit directions to trailheads and approximate hiking times.

In addition to many outlying areas, the extensive Buckeye Trail is accessible in or near Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, Cleveland, and Akron. Robert Pond has supplemented each description with interesting details about the geology and the diverse habitats of flora and fauna. Readers, too, can enjoy the beauty and wonders of Ohio if they Follow the Blue Blazes.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Follow+the+Blue+Blazes.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

View from the Fazenda

Sat, 01 Feb 2003

View from the Fazenda (2003)
A Tale of the Brazilian Heartlands

By Ellen Bromfield Geld

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/View+from+the+Fazenda.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

A Literary Guide to Provence

Thu, 01 Nov 2001

A Literary Guide to Provence (2001)

By Daniel Vitaglione

Provence through the eyes of its writers--those who wrote of it in Provençal or French and also those visitors who were moved by its beauty--that is the inspiration behind A Literary Guide to Provence. In this compact travel guide, Marseilles native Daniel Vitaglione presents a literary panorama of the region of southern France from the Avignon of Mistral to Colette's St. Tropez.

Including such sites as the birthplace of Nostradamus and the ruins of the Marquis de Sade's castle, A Literary Guide to Provence presents a thousand years of history entwined with maps and photos that provide readers on tour with a sense of the historical import of this most beautiful of regions even as they experience it firsthand.

Both authors of Provençal ancestry and those who came to love and live in Provence are featured in this comprehensive and enchanting picture of the garden place of France. The Riviera enticed Virginia Woolf. Toulon inspired two novels by Georges Sand. Robert Louis Stevenson resided in Hyères, as did Edith Wharton. Le Lavandou was Willa Cather's favorite place. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in St. Raphael and Juan-les-Pins, where he wrote Tender is the Night.

This illustrated guide follows in these writers' footsteps, and the practical information on hotels and restaurants (phones, web sites, email, etc.) make it the ideal traveling companion for armchair tourists and those who cannot resist seeing Provence for themselves.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/A+Literary+Guide+to+Provence.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Denver in Slices

Sat, 15 Aug 1998

Denver in Slices (1998)
A Historical Guide to the City

By Louisa Ward Arps

The Old West has been viewed from many perspectives, from the scornful to the uncritically romantic. But seldom has it been treated with the honest nostalgia of the wonderful accounts and pictures gathered in Denver in Slices.

Ohio University Press/Swallow Press is proud to reissue this Western classic, which includes a brief survey of all Denver history, some slices depicting the most fascinating places and characters. The City Ditch, Cherry Creek, River Front Park, the Denver Mint, the Tabors, the Windsor Hotel, the Baron of Montclair, Overland Park, Buffalo Bill, Elitch's Gardens, and Eugene Field—they're all here. Illustrating these stories is an array of nearly one hundred pictures of the people, buildings, and street scenes: a fascinating panorama of the gold rush camp that became the Rocky Mountain metropolis.

With a new foreword by renowned Denver historian Thomas J. Noel, this classic will once again help preserve Denver's lively past.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Denver+in+Slices.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Walking the Steps of Cincinnati

Tue, 14 Jul 1998

Walking the Steps of Cincinnati (1998)

By Mary Anna DuSablon

During the nineteenth century, various basin and hillside neighborhoods in Cincinnati were linked by over thirty miles of steps--along cliffs with extraordinary panoramic views and through ravines of stunning beauty.

Visitors who marvel at Cincinnati's "seven" hills never realize that they can actually be conquered on foot. And while almost all the stairs are regularly used by schoolchildren, runners, and some commuters, even native Cincinnatians have been unaware of the steps in neighborhoods other than their own. Until now.

Complete with easy-to-follow maps and directions, Walking the Steps of Cincinnati is a field guide that will introduce readers and walkers to over two hundred sets of steps within thirty-five urban and neighborhood trails. Each trail is distinctive, designed in a circular or figure-eight fashion. While some walks are more physically challenging than others, each route is less than four miles in length. All are rewarding, many revealing views and historic information seen only from these unique vantage points.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Walking+the+Steps+of+Cincinnati.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Literary Guide and Companion to Northern England

Sun, 01 Jan 1995

Literary Guide and Companion to Northern England (1995)

By Robert M. Cooper

The Literary Guide and Companion to Northern England is the third and final guide in Cooper’s light-hearted and informative travel collection.

As Cooper explains in the preface to the first volume: “This book was written for the person who unabashedly loves travel, loves England, and loves English literature. In short, for somebody remarkably like the person I was when I began to plan my first trip to Britain and looked for just such a book.”

Cooper’s writing project grew with his enthusiasm for his task. Soon there were several more trips to England, more months at the British Museum, and not one book manuscript, but three.

Like other Cooper books, this guide to northern England is wonderfully helpful to the visitor, rich in anecdotal detail, and cast with Britain’s finest literary figures — in this case, Johnson, Boswell, Lord Byron, D.H. Lawrence, the Brontë sisters, Tennyson, Shelley, Wordsworth. There are road maps for the motorist, walking tours of towns of particular interest, and clear directions for getting from one place to another — scenes of courtships, weddings, meetings (chance or planned) that made their mark on our literary heritage.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Literary+Guide+and+Companion+to+Northern+England.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.

Literary Guide and Companion to Middle England

Fri, 01 Jan 1993

Literary Guide and Companion to Middle England (1993)

By Robert M. Cooper

Cooper’s The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England has been popular with travellers since 1986.

This, the second guide in a series of three, brings all Cooper’s delight and enthusiasm to the literary sites of Middle England. The author takes us through fourteen counties in the heart of England, engaging us with anecdotes of local literary figures, pointing out the homes, pubs, hotels, and places (fact and fictional) of all sorts that have connections to writers, their families, their associates, their pets, and sometimes, their fictional characters. Maps before each county section show highway numbers and suggested routes.

One of the indexes indicates which hotels and pubs we may enjoy today, and Cooper also points out the churches, gardens — even graveyards — that hold special meaning for those interested in English literature and the people who have made it, from before Chaucer to Jeffrey Archer.

For more information about this book visit ohioswallow.com/book/Literary+Guide+and+Companion+to+Middle+England.
For a look at new releases from Ohio University Press visit ohioswallow.com/new_releases.