Back when most people stayed home, travel writing was a highly imaginative genre. Ask Pausanias, Ibn Battuta or Marco Polo about the strange creatures and bizarre customs that they, and evidently ...

Boston Athenaeum. Catalogue of Paintings and Statuary, exhibited for the Benefit of the National Sailors' Fair, at the Athenaeum Gallery, Beacon Street, Boston. 1864. Boston: Fred Rogers, Printer, No.

On Shakespeare: The World as Stage (Eminent Lives), by Bill Bryson. Shakespeare biographers, says Bryson, generally indulge in speculation or rely on supposition, even “surrender themselves to their ...