The Travels of Marco Polo by Marco Polo
Marco Polo (1254-1329) has achieved an almost archetypal status as a traveller, and his Travels is one of the first great travel books of Western literature, outside the ancient world. The Travels recounts Polo's journey to the eastern court of Kublai Khan, the chieftain of the Mongol empire which covered the Asian continent, but which was almost unknown to Polo's contemporaries. Encompassing a twenty-four year period from 1721, Polo's account details his travels in the service of the empire, from Beijing to northern India and ends with the remarkable story of Polo's return voyage from the Chinese port of Amoy to the Persian Gulf. Alternately factual and fantastic, Polo's prose at once reveals the medieval imagination's limits, and captures the wonder of subsequent travel writers when faced with the unfamiliar, the exotic or the unknown.
Marco Polo (1254-1324) was the son of a Venetian merchant and traveler. In 1271, Marco, with his father and uncle, began a journey that four years later led to their being accepted at the court of Kublai Khan. During these years, they traveled extensively in Persia and China, through regions almost totally unknown to the Western world. In service to the Khan, Marco explored Tibet and Burma and many of the remote provinces of China; it is possible that he went to the southern parts of India as well. Participating in a military conflict between Genoa and Venice, he was taken prisoner in 1298. While in captivity, he dictated the Travels of Marco Polo to a fellow prisoner. Milton Rugoff was a longtime editor for several publishing houses. He is the author of a number of books, including A Harvest of World Folk Tales, Marco Polo's Adventures in China, The Great Travelers, and The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century, which was nominated for an American Book Award in 1982. Howard Mittelmark is an editor, book critic, and coauthor of How Not to Write a Novel. He lives in New York City.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781853264733 |
| ISBN 10 | 1853264733 |
| Title | The Travels of Marco Polo |
| Author | Marco Polo |
| Series | Classics Of World Literature |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Wordsworth Editions Ltd |
| Year published | 1997-02-05 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |