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With this book Troelstra gives us a superb overview of natural history travel narratives. The well over four thousand detailed entries, ranging over four centuries and all major western European languages, are drawn from a wide range of sources and include both printed books and periodical contributions.
About the author
Anne S. Troelstra held a chair in pure mathematics and foundations of mathematics at the University of Amsterdam from 1970 to 2000, and has published more than 80 mathematical papers and mathematical monographs. He is a member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. In 1996 he received the F.L. Bauer Prize of the Technical University of Munich for his contributions to theoretical computer science.
Following his retirement he turned into a distinguished, albeit non-professional, scholar of the history and social significance of Natural History, devoting much of his time to the study of natural history travel narratives. He already published two books on the subject (in Dutch):
Tijgers op de Ararat (Tigers on Mount Ararat) in 2003,
Kolibries in de oren (Hummingbirds in the ears) in 2009, as well as an anthology of Dutch natural history travel narratives,
Van Spitsbergen naar Suriname, in 2007.
