Notes of a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo

This little-known work from Thackeray's early career, written while he was still an impecunious journalist and before the success of Vanity Fair, shows the style which was soon to make him a major literary figure. It is a lively account of his journey in 1844 to the Eastern Mediterranean, via Gibraltar, Malta and Rhodes, to visit the newly-fashionable extensions to the Grand Tour of Constantinople, Jerusalem and Cairo. Thackeray travels by steamboat, itself a novelty, and gives his impressions of the people, antiquities and buildings which had already begun to captivate the imagination of the British public. These impressions combine to make a spirited and witty travelogue - sometimes irreverent, sometimes cynical, but vivid in description. The illustrations, some of which have only recently become accessible, are by leading orientalist painters of the period, a number of whom were visited by Thackeray on his journey and are featured in the book.