The coasts of illusion : A study of travel tales by Clark B. Firestone
"The Coasts of Illusion: A Study of Travel Tales" by Clark B. Firestone is a historical and literary analysis written in the early 20th century. The book explores the myths, legends, and half-truths woven into travel literature through the ages, focusing on how these narratives shaped humanity’s perception of the earth and its inhabitants. Rather than examining the supernatural, the work delves into the imaginative and sometimes fanciful ways in which people
explained unknown lands, creatures, and phenomena before the age of modern geography and science. The opening of this study sets the tone by invoking the legendary adventures of Marco Polo, whose tales blend fact with hearsay and wonder, and uses his imagined dialogue with Venetians to illustrate how travel stories both fascinated and amused people. The preface clarifies that Firestone aims to survey the world as filtered through myths, exploring how geography, peoples, animals, and even natural phenomena like rivers or stones were distorted or imagined anew. Early chapters describe how maps once depicted both real and fantastical lands, and recount a host of beliefs about the world’s shape, the mystical properties of plants and stones, and the marvels attached to animals. The text emphasizes the power of human imagination—driven by hope, fear, or wishful thinking—in constructing a world of marvels that persisted until relatively modern times. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
| How to read | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.html.images | 1.2 MB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.epub3.images | 4.6 MB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.epub.images | 4.6 MB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.epub.noimages | 679 kB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.kf8.images | 5.7 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.kindle.images | 5.6 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75759.txt.utf-8 | 936 kB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/75759/pg75759-h.zip | 4.6 MB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
About this eBook
| Author | Firestone, Clark B. (Clark Barnaby), 1869-1957 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Hambidge, Ruth |
| Illustrator | Millais, John Everett, 1829-1896 |
| LoC No. | 24028913 |
| Title | The coasts of illusion : A study of travel tales |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Original Publication | New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. |
| Note | Reading ease score: 64.4 (8th & 9th grade). Neither easy nor difficult to read. |
| Contents | Marco talks with his neighbors -- Preface -- The world that was -- The earth itself -- Inanimate nature -- The animal kingdom -- The fabulous beasts -- Fable upon wings -- The dragon -- Denizens of the deep -- The peoples of prodigy -- The satyrs -- The pygmies -- The Amazons of legend -- The Amazons of history -- The folk of tradition -- The horizon lands -- Lands of legend -- Islands of enchantment -- The terrible ocean -- The Sargasso Sea -- Atlantis -- The gilded man -- The dream quests of Spain -- The fabric of illusion -- The travel tales of mankind -- The gains of fable. |
| Credits | Alan, Hannah Wilson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | G: Geography, Anthropology, Recreation |
| Subject | Legends |
| Subject | Geographical myths |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 75759 |
| Release Date | Mar 31, 2025 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 494 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |
