Burchell's Travels

Title: Burchell's Travels
Subtitle: The Life, Art and Journeys of William John Burchell, 1781-1863
Author: Susan Buchanan
Genre: Biography
Publisher: Penguin Random House South Africa
Cape Town, South Africa 2015
ISBN 9781770227552 / ISBN 978-1-77022-755-2
Softcover, 17 x 23 cm, 238 pages

Description:

The explorer, naturalist and artist William John Burchell is probably best known for his travels in South Africa from 1810 to 1815, and for his classic travelogue, Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa, published in two quarto volumes in 1822 and 1824. Together they give a full account of his expedition in the interior of the Cape Colony from June 1811 to August 1812, although they do not cover the return trip to Cape Town, which concluded in April 1815. While the journals he kept during his journey are lost, his map, paintings and sketches help to fill in the narrative gaps. Burchell's Travels, in the words of the renowned social anthropologist Isaac Schapera, 'has long been very highly esteemed'. Sidney Mendelssohn, compiler of the South African Bibliography, acclaimed Burchell's Travels as the most valuable and accurate work on South Africa published up to the first quarter of the nineteenth century'. The missionary Robert Moffat praised the Travels as 'far more correct and interesting than anything of the kind which has been written'. For Mary Elizabeth Barber, the first female naturalist at the Cape in the nineteenth century, it was 'a book of much research and great truthfulness'. In comparison, Burchell's travels in St Helena (1805-10) and Brazil (1825-30) are less well known; he also travelled extensively in Britain and in Europe from 1815 until his death in 1863. Landscape paintings and sketches of scenery, animals, trees and plants record the localities he explored during these excursions, with dates and the wide range of subjects he was drawn to usually included. William John Burchell was a compulsive traveller.

Content: Burchell's Travels

Introduction: 'We shall not cease from exploration
'A splendid education'
Fulham, 1781 to 1805
' The beautiful little Island'
St Helena, December 1806 to October 1810
'For the first time on the land of Africa'
Cape Town and vicinity, November 1810 to June 1811
'Traversing and exploring so interesting a portion of the globe'
Cape Town to Klaarwater, June to October 1811
'Some peculiar feelings and a strange interest in everything'
Klaarwater and excursion to the Ky-Gariep, October to November 1811
'The chief obstacle is the want of proper men'
Klaarwater and Graaff-Reinet, November 1811 to May 1812
'Broils and discords'
Journey to Litakun, June to July 1812
'Breathing the air of Africa'
Litakun, July to August 1812
'Keep moving!'
Litakun to Cape Town, via the Maadji Mountains, Graaff-Reinet and the Garden Route, August 1812 to April 1815
'In the full vigour of manhood'
England and Brazil, 1815 to 1830
'A life of science'
England and the Continent, 1830 to 1863
Acknowledgements
Picture credits
Notes
Bibliography
Index