Household Words

Mr. Booley is a stout, elderly Londoner with one astonishing gift: an appetite for travel that survives age, retirement, and his stubbornly English habits. In dry, mock-heroic prose, he ranges from New Orleans up the Mississippi and Missouri toward the Rocky Mountains, then on to Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, India, and even the Arctic with Sir James Ross. Along the way he meets steamboats, prairies, frontier towns, Maori communities, ruins, deserts, and polar ice, always observing the world with comic earnestness, odd opinions, and a surprising faith in progress, shared knowledge, and the value of seeing beyond one's own doorstep. The collection also turns from adventure to tragedy and reform. In "Loaded Dice," a picturesque rural setting gives way to a soldier's funeral and the ruin of the Lovell family after gambling, guilt, and suicide destroy their hopes. Another section offers a sharp indictment of English education, condemning illiteracy, private schooling, and the neglect of working people, especially rural laborers. By contrasting England's failings with better systems abroad, the book joins satire, sentiment, travel writing, and social criticism in a vivid portrait of nineteenth-century life. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.