These are modern days. We can jump on a plane and be entirely around the world in a day, travelling from the familiar to the unfamiliar in hours. We can probe the ocean depths and the secrets of space. Yet, there is one place entirely beyond our reach: the past. Our past is an exotic place. In the past, the places were different, the governments were different, the ideas were different. Things got done differently. Yet, the people of the past are unmistakably us and we are unmistakably them.
The Past is an Exotic Place is a celebration of the exotic us, reprinting nineteenth-century journalism filed from distant corners of the world. These stories explore: Old New York, the Siberian Overland, the Pyramids, Central Asia, Havana, Australia, Ottawa, London, Shanghai, New Zealand, the tents of a Turkoman robber, pirates on the Whampoa River, Egypt, a Buffalo Hunt, the Sahara, Austrian Tyrol, Panama and San Francisco, the Dead Sea, Southern India, the Yuen-Ming-Yuen Summer Palace, Jerusalem, Turin, Portugal, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Lahor in Old India, Dublin, Central Park, Italy, Judae, the South Pacific, Jersey and Guernsey, Monaco, Indian Territory in the US, Albany, a Bedouin village, a Chinese temple, the Matterhorn, Greenland, Switzerland, Lake Phiala, Yesso in Japan, the Canadian frontier, the Bromok volcano in Java, Styria, and Bokhara.
The Past is an Exotic Place is a time capsule containing examples of a special type of nineteenth century journalism: remarkable and often lost tales of adventure and travel and geography. In many cases, the events in these stories were communicated directly to James Maccauley, the editor of the weekly The Leisure Hour: A Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation. Most of these stories first appeared in the 1865 issues of The Leisure Hour, published in London, England. The guiding philosophy of Maccauley's journal can be found in a line of William Cowper's poetry emblazoned upon the cover: "Amusement and True Knowledge Hand In Hand." The goal of these stories and this journal was to help fill the nineteenth century's new found leisure time with entertainment, but also to communicate something important about the human condition. However, this collection does not present a nostalgic view of the past . . . the past is presented as it was: wildly imperfect.
The Past is an Exotic Place is essential reading for anyone interesting in exploring and understanding our shared past as it happened rather than as we may have wished it happened.
