Eothen, or, Traces of Travel Brought Home from the East ..

Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in Japanese, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.

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I went on and came near to those waters of death. They stretched deeply into the southern desert, and before me, and all around, as far away as the eye could follow, blank hills piled high over hills, pale, yellow, and naked, walled up in her tomb for ever the dead and damned Gomorrah. There was no fly that hummed in the forbidden air, but instead a deep stillness; no grass grew from the earth, no weed peered through the void sand; but in mockery of all life there were trees borne down by Jordan in some ancient flood, and these, grotesquely planted upon the forlorn shore, spread out their grim skeleton arms, all scorched and charred to blackness by the heats of the long silent years.

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"I had come, as it were, to the end of this wheel-going Europe, and now my eyes would see the splendour and havoc of the East."

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in German, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.

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While travel writing had already enjoyed a long and honored tradition in England, the publication in 1844 of Alexander Kinglake's Eothen forever changed the genre, and its influence may be traced down the generations from Robert Curzon's Monasteries of the Levant (1849) to Paul Theroux's Great Railway Bazaar (1975). Eothen--a Greek word meaning "from the east"--is certainly one of the most witty and idiosyncratic of travel books, for Kinglake was not as interested in the art, buildings, or appearance of a particular place than he was in the impression these made on him. And unlike most other wealthy travelers of his time, Kinglake took especial delight in the exotic and slightly danagerous aspects of his travel. Avoiding the obligatory ports of call of the English gentleman's Grand Tour, Kinglake followed a circuitous route from Europe to what was then called the Near East--Turkey, the countries of the Holy Land, Egypt. Rarely does he make an effort to describe scenery, and some of the most well-known of his stops are hardly mentioned at all: Bethlehem he dismisses in thirteen lines, and Baalbec, well, "Come! Baalbec is over; I got 'rather well' out of that." But he devotes a whole chapter to the Sphinx--or rather to his contemplation of the Sphinx--and while he rarely imparts any information useful to future travelers, he constantly transforms his experience into a lively, reckless, sometimes unfair, sometimes moving, often hilarious artistic interpretation. It was this unusual and captivating style which so intrigued his first readers and made Eothen an enduring bestseller in his time; it is also what makes it a classic in ours.

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Alexander William Kinglake's first literary venture, a very popular work of Eastern travel, first published in 1844.

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Webster's edition of this classic is organized to expose the reader to a maximum number of difficult and potentially ambiguous English words. Rare or idiosyncratic words and expressions are given lower priority compared to "difficult, yet commonly used" words. Rather than supply a single translation, many words are translated for a variety of meanings in French, allowing readers to better grasp the ambiguity of English, and avoid using the notes as a pure translation crutch. Having the reader decipher a word's meaning within context serves to improve vocabulary retention and understanding. Each page covers words not already highlighted on previous pages. If a difficult word is not translated on a page, chances are that it has been translated on a previous page.