Translated by Jason Wilson with an Introduction by Malcolm Nicolson
Map
Historical Introduction by Malcolm Nicolson
Introduction by Jason Wilson
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Further Reading
PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Author's Introduction
Notes
Alexander von Humboldt was born on the family estate at
Tegel in Berlin in 1769. With his elder brother Wilhelm he was
educated by tutors and then at Frankfurt, Göttingen and Hamburg
Universities where he studied botany, literature, archaeology,
electricity, mineralogy and the natural sciences. In 1790 he
traveled abroad and published his first works in botanical and
chemical journals. While at Jena he befriended Goethe. He worked in
the Prussian Mining Administration until his mother died in 1796. A
large inheritance enabled Humboldt to travel; after a few
frustrations he was allowed by Charles IV of Spain to travel in the
Spanish American colonies at his own expense, with his companion
Aimé Bonpland. After five years in the New World (1799-1804)
Humboldt settled in Paris to begin publishing his encyclopaedic
Relation historique du voyage aux regions équinoxiales du
nouveau continent, finally completed in thirty volumes in 1834,
where the Personal Narrative comprised volumes 28 to 30.
Humboldt was not only a prominent figure in the Parisian scientific
world but also Chamberlain to Friedrich Wilhelm III, and Councilor
of State to Friedrich Wilhelm IV. In 1829 he traveled to Russia and
Central Asia and published his account in French in 1843. In 1834
he began his comprehensive survey of creation, Kosmos,
completed posthumously in 1862. He died in 1859, a bachelor, and
was buried in the family vault at Tegel, honored as one of the
great speculative scientific travelers of the nineteenth
century.
Jason Wilson was born in Mauritius in 1944, Was a lecturer
at Kings College, London, and is currently Reader in Latin American
Literature at University College, London. He has published
Octavio Paz: A Study of his Poetics (1979), Octavio
Paz (1986), An A-Z of Latin American Literature in English
Translation (1989), the Traveler’s Literary Companion to
South and Central America (1993) and essays on W.H. Hudson,
Charles Darwin, Julio Cortázar and Latin American poetry.
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