The Modern Traveller

New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923. First U. S. Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. Pictures by B.T.B. [Basil Temple Blackwood]. 80 pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. This is a book of verses, with black and white illustrations by B.T.B. Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc (27 July 1870 - 16 July 1953) was a British-French writer and historian and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford South from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds. Belloc became a naturalized British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship. His writings encompassed religious poetry and comic verse for children. His widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death". He wrote historical biographies and numerous travel works, including "The Path to Rome" (1902). He also collaborated with G. K. Chesterton on a number of works. The prolific author of more than 150 books, Belloc wrote on myriad subjects, from warfare to poetry to the many current topics of his day. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters,[25] along with H.G.Wells, George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton, all of whom debated with each other into the 1930s. His best travel writing has secured a permanent following. Lord Ian Basil Gawaine Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood (4 November 1870 - 3 July 1917), known as Lord Basil Temple Blackwood, was a British lawyer, civil servant and book illustrator. First published in 1898, The Modern Traveller is not a travel book at all, but a brilliant satire (in verse) that attacks colonialism, explorer-journalists intent on fame and fortune, and British pretensions to moral superiority. Along with other travel accounts of the period, Belloc was undoubtedly parodying Henry Morton Stanley's In Darkest Africa, 1890. The entire poem takes the form of an interview that the narrator of the story, an unscrupulous adventurer, gives to a journalist from the Daily Menace. The narrator explains to his wide-eyed visitor how he teamed up with Commander Henry Sin, a foreign mercenary, and Captain William Blood, a commercial buccaneer, and embarked on an enterprising and patriotic expedition to the dark continent. Belloc has the narrator describe the dangers and hardships endured by these scoundrels, along with the narrator's claims to personal heroism, so as to make it clear that most, if not all, of the account has been fabricated. Conveniently, Commander Sin and Captain Blood, perhaps also fictitious, do not survive the expedition to provide independent testimony. Belloc's satire ends with the narrator boasting about how much he is being paid for his upcoming book.