The author of this book, William Lithgow, a man who lived in the 16th century, famed for his journeys on foot across various parts of the world, including Spain, Turkey, France, and Egypt. Lithgow seems to have started his travels at a very early age, having 'a large infusion of the wandering spirit common to his country-men.' He claims that his 'painful feet traced over (beside my passages of Seas and Rivers) thirty-six thousand and odd miles, which draws near to twice the circumference of the whole Earth.'

Captain John Anderson served in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) as ‘Pilot-Major’ in a fleet of ships that set sail from Europe in December 1640, and returned with his ships in July 1643. This was Anderson’s fourth voyage to the East Indies. His journey took three years during which time he safely brought a VOC fleet to Java and home again through tempests and full-scale battles with the Portuguese at sea. In this, the first-ever edition of Anderson’s Journal, the editors have complemented his own words with chapters discussing the author’s contributions to the History of Warfare in Asia, Maritime Navigation and Early Modern Travel Writing.

Prepared to honour the work of R. J. Lyall, this collection of essays offers new perspectives on the literature and culture of the reign of James VI, from his accession as an infant to the throne of Scotland, through the Union of the Crowns, to his final years as king of Great Britain. Its emphasis is on James’s reign as a whole, stressing the continuities in literary culture throughout the time of his rule, rather than the more familiar narrative of disjunction caused by his accession to the English throne in the 1603 Union of Crowns. In addition, the collection extends its focus beyond a concentration on the environment of James’s court to situate the literature of his reign in terms of both regional and international contexts. The essays range widely in their approaches and cover topics as diverse as book history and printing; textual scholarship and editing; language, rhetoric, and prosody; gender attitudes in James’s reign; travel writing and colonial contexts; Latin literary culture; and courtly culture and the politics of literary representation. Such variety is also evident in the languages discussed, which include Scots, English, Latin and French, in the generic range of the subject texts, from epic poetry to travel writing, and in the writers discussed, from the very familiar, such as John Knox and Robert Aytoun, to the currently less well-known, such as William Lithgow and Thomas Hudson. All the contributors are respected scholars in the discipline, including some of the most senior figures in the field. Taken as a whole, this collection is the most extensive and varied treatment of Scottish literary culture of this period to date, and will be a key collection for all students and specialists in the field.

An exciting and unusual book first published in 1632, Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations has been a much-ignored masterpiece of global literature, though it is one of the world's great travel tales.Beginning his travels in the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland, Lithgow soon went off to explore the Netherlands, Germany, Bohemia, France, and Italy. He then traveled throughout Greece, Egypt, and Malta before having a spin through Western Europe again and finally returning to Great Britain. Most notably, Lithgow survived torture by the Inquisition in Spain and later traveled throughout his native Scotland.AUTHOR BIO: One of the earliest world explorers and great men of literature, William Lithgow (1582-1645) completed his major work, The Total Discourse of the Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations of Long Nineteen Years Travayles in 1632. It was reprinted in 1906.