Richard Henry Dana Jr.
Two Years Before the Mast and Other Voyages

Two Years Before the Mast • To Cuba and Back • Journal of a Voyage Round the World, 1859–1860

"Dana was a born adventurer; if Everest has been climbable in his era, he would have gone for it. The Library of America continues to be one of U.S. publishing's proudest achievements."—Palm Beach Post

This volume collects three sea-going travel narratives by Richard Henry Dana, Jr., that span 25 years of maritime history, from the age of sail to the age of steam.

Suffering from persistent weakness in his eyes, Dana left Harvard at age 19 and sailed from Boston in 1834 as a common seaman. Two Years Before the Mast (1840) is the classic account of his voyages around Cape Horn and time ashore in California in the decade before the Gold Rush. Written with an unprecedented realism that challenged the romanticism of previous maritime literature, Dana's narrative vividly portrays the daily routines and hardships of life at sea, the capriciousness and brutality of merchant ship captains and officers, and the beauty and danger of the southern oceans in winter. Included in an appendix is "Twenty-Four Years After" (1869), in which Dana describes his return to California in 1859–1860 and the immense changes brought about by American annexation, the frenzy of the Gold Rush, and the growing commerce of "a new world, the awakened Pacific."

Dana first visited Cuba in the winter of 1859 while the possible annexation of the island was being debated in the U.S. Senate. To Cuba and Back (1859) is his entertaining and enthusiastic account of his trip, during which he toured Havana and a sugar plantation; attended a bullfight; visited churches, hospitals, schools, and prisons; and investigated the impact on Cuban society of slavery and autocratic Spanish rule.

Journal of a Voyage Round the World, 1859–1860 records the 14-month circumnavigation that took Dana to California, Hawaii, China, Japan, Malaya, Ceylon, India, Egypt, and Europe. Written with unflagging energy and curiosity, the journal provides fascinating vignettes of frontier life in California, missionary influence in Hawaii, the impact of the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War on China, and the opening of Japan to the West, while capturing the transition from the age of sail to the faster, smaller world created by the steamship and the telegraph.

Thomas L. Philbrick, volume editor, is professor emeritus of English at the University of Pittsburgh and the author of James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction.

Also of interest:
James Fenimore Cooper: Sea Tales

Warehouse clearance sale (Save 60%):
American Sea Writing: A Literary Anthology

Copyright 1995–2007 Literary Classics of the United States, Inc.
Contact Us | Privacy and Security