In 1879 two Englishmen, writer Samuel Nugent Townshend and photographer John George Hyde, set out for a pleasant Indian summer on a tour of the American West. The duo documented their travels by steamship and train, through Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Chicago, across the Missouri to the “new state of Kansas” and the beginning of the western lands and business opportunities that were to become the focus of their narrative. Reprinted here with critical notes and introduction, Our Indian Summer in the Far West offers an enlightening—and often entertaining—perspective on an early moment in the growth of capitalism and industry in the American West. Originally published as a photographic travelogue and guide to British investment in the American West, Townshend and Hyde’s account is both idiosyncratic and emblematic of its time. Interested in the West’s economic and environmental potential, the two men focused on farming in Kansas, railroads and mining in Colorado, a bear hunt in New Mexico, and ranching in Texas. The sojourners’ own foibles also enter the narrative: alerted to the difficulty of finding a hotel with a bath, the two Victorians took along a portable bathtub made of India rubber. Their words and pictures speak volumes about contemporary attitudes toward race, empire, and the future of civilization. An introduction by coeditor Alex Hunt provides background on the creators and the travelogue genre. The recovery and republication of this extremely rare volume, an artifact of the Victorian American West, make available an important primary document of a brief but pivotal historical moment connecting the American West and the British Empire.

John Payne Collier (1789–1883), one of the most controversial figures in the history of literary scholarship, pursued a double career. A prolific and highly influential writer on the drama, poetry, and popular prose of Shakespeare's age, Collier was at the same time the promulgator of a great body of forgeries and false evidence, seriously affecting the text and biography of Shakespeare and many others. This monumental two-volume work for the first time addresses the whole of Collier's activity, systematically sorting out his genuine achievements from his impostures. Arthur and Janet Freeman reassess the scholar-forger's long life, milieu, and relations with a large circle of associates and rivals while presenting a chronological bibliography of his extensive publications, all fully annotated with regard to their creditability. The authors also survey the broader history of literary forgery in Great Britain and consider why so talented a man not only yielded to its temptations but also persisted in it throughout his life.

55,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2002.