Far-fetched Facts

This is the history of travel literature - both real and imaginary - from classical times, via early accounts of the new world, to the accounts of the South Sea islands that lay beyond.

This study traces continuities from the "Odyssey" to the 20th-century and stresses the interplay of fact and fiction in a literature with a tendency to deviate from the truth.

It includes a fully sourced account of the mutiny of the Bounty, together with discussions of Cook, Bougainville, Defoe, Swift, Byron, Melville, Loti and Stevenson.

This work is intended for scholars and students of travel literature, early American and Pacific travel and discovery (in particular Cook and Bougainville) and its impact on Western literature and philosophy.

It should also be of interest to scholars of Defoe, Swift, Byron, Melville, Loti and Stevenson, and the mutiny on the Bounty.