The Armchair Traveller

I am alerted to a recently published book that compiles a few works by a 19th century travel writer named Favell Lee Mortimer.

In the middle of the 1800s, Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer set out to write an ambitious guide to all the nations on Earth. There were just three problems. She had never set foot outside Shropshire. She was horribly misinformed about virtually every topic she turned her attention to. And she was prejudiced against foreigners. The result was an unintentionally hilarious masterpiece: 'People who are dainty must not come to Norway.' 'If the Siberians' taste in dress is laughable, their taste in food is horrible.' 'British America [Canada]'s Lake Superior is so immense, that Ireland might be bathed in it; that is, if islands could be bathed.' In "The Clumsiest People in Europe", Todd Pruzan has gathered together a selection of Mrs Mortimer's finest moments, celebrating the woman who turned ignorance into an art form.

You can purchase the volume (as I will, if after Christmas has gone past I've not been given a copy) in the usual manner (US,UK) or go to Google Books where a large number of her original volumes have been scanned and posted. To help you out, here are the links to her volumes on Asia and Australia, Africa and America and Europe.

To give you a quick hint of what is in store, a quick skim allowed me to find her entry on the city of Liverpool, which I now post in its entirety: