England, Picturesque and Descriptive: A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel

Joel CookProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.2
Word count
1.1M words
Chapters
108

Tags

English Originals Travel Human GeographyHistorical ReappraisalArchitecture and SightsIllustrated GuideGeography ScienceTravel GuideTravel WritingExotic CultureFolk CustomsEnglish Countryside

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.England, Picturesque and Descriptive: A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel by Joel CookAuthor: Cook, Joel, 1842-1910,Language: English, Class: DA: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Great Britain, Ireland, Central Europe, Release Date: Aug 24, 2009

Editor's review

Joel Cook's England, Picturesque and Descriptive is a travelogue-cum-topography of England, combining the immediacy of a travel journal with the orderliness of a local gazetteer. The author describes towns, countryside, churches, castles and natural scenery along the way; the prose is in the stately English of the Victorian era, with meticulous observation and frequent explanation of place names and historical anecdotes. Its value lies not in offering a practical modern travel guide, but in showing how a nineteenth-century traveler viewed England: which sights were cherished, which details were dwelt on, which historical memories were treated as the soul of a place. Reading it conveys a slow, pedestrian-paced way of seeing, suited to being read in installments in quiet surroundings. For readers studying English local history, travel literature or English prose, it is primary material for close reading; for general readers, it is a leisure book for wandering with the author through old England.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read chapter by chapter by town or region, one or two sections at a time, using a map to locate the author's route.
  2. Skip unfamiliar place names and historical figures at first, then look them up after finishing a chapter, so as not to break the rhythm.
  3. Treat it as a specimen of travel literature, marking sentence patterns and diction in scenic description for use in your own writing.
  4. If the English original is hard going, read a Chinese translation or introduction first to understand the structure, then return to selected passages in the original.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
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  8. 8
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  55. 55
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  60. 60
  61. 61
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  63. 63
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  108. 108

FAQ

Is this book a practical travel guide to England? No. It is a nineteenth-century travel essay and topographical account, focused on scenery, local history and the author's impressions; it does not provide modern travel information such as transport, accommodation or ticket prices, and is not suitable for planning an itinerary by following the book.
How difficult is the English, and is it suitable for English learners? The original is Victorian prose with long sentences and many place names and historical allusions, making it moderately to highly difficult overall. It suits readers with a reasonable command of English who are willing to read closely; beginners may use annotations or read selected passages, but it is not an introductory text.
In what order should one read this book? Read in regional or chapter order, or start with towns you know well. After each section, check the map to confirm the location, which helps you better appreciate the author's route and sequence of observation; there is no need to read it from cover to cover in one go.
Is this book useful for studying English local history? It has reference value. The book records the local landscapes, buildings and historical anecdotes the author saw, reflecting the concerns and narrative style of a nineteenth-century traveler; it can serve as supplementary material for local history and travel literature research, but should be used alongside more systematic historical sources.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Joel Cook Author · American · 1842–1910

Joel Cook (1842–1910) was an American journalist, writer and politician. Born in Philadelphia, he edited the Philadelphia Public Ledger, worked as the American correspondent for The Times of London, and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1907. As a writer he focused on travel and regional description, with a documentary, closely observed style. His representative works include England, Picturesque and Descriptive and the multi-volume America, Picturesque and Descriptive. The library holds seven of his works, most of them concerned with landscapes and cultures in Europe and America, combining the immediacy of travel writing with a systematic, chronicle-like quality that offered contemporary readers a fairly comprehensive picture of distant places. Cook died in Philadelphia in 1910.