Autobiography of James Silk Buckingham
Including his Voyages, Travels, Adventures, Speculations, Successes and Failures

This two-volume autobiography of James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855), traveller, writer and social idealist, was published in 1855.

James Silk Buckingham (Author)

9781108038577, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 November 2011

424 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2.4 cm, 0.54 kg

James Silk Buckingham (1786–1855) was a writer who travelled extensively and published accounts of his adventures in places such as India, Persia, Egypt, and Palestine. He first went to sea as a boy, and, aged only ten, spent a period as a prisoner-of-war in Spain. He was expelled from India in 1823 for criticising the East India Company and the Bengal government. Back in London, he was a supporter of reform, and served as the first M.P. for the new constituency of Sheffield, from 1832 to 1837. He founded several journals, including The Athenaeum. On retiring from Parliament, he left for North America, where he spent nearly four years, and was highly critical of America's economic dependence on slavery. His autobiography was cut short by his death. Volume 1 covers his early life and travels until 1812, mostly in the Mediterranean but also to the West Indies and America.

Preface
1. Reasons for writing this autobiography
2. Excitement of the French Revolution, in 1792
3. My going to sea at length determined on
4. Sailing from Falmouth, after adieus and struggles
5. Second voyage to Lisbon in the same ship
6. Disastrous issue for my third voyage to Lisbon
7. Setting out on our march through Galicia
8. The English fleet of Sir John Jervis entering the Tagus
9. Complete change in the current of my life
10. Life of ease and pleasure passed on shore
11. Determination to resume my original sea-life
12. Delay in the arrival of an expected ship
13. First voyage to the West Indies in the Titus
14. Portuguese merchants from Lisbon and Oporto
15. Voyage to Virginia, in America, in the ship Rising States
16. First appointment as Captain of a West Indiaman, at twenty-one
17. First entertainment at a military mess-room
18. Homeward voyage from the Bahama Islands
19. Association with captains, merchants, and ship-owners
20. Anticipations and preparations for the Mediterranean
21. Departure from Gibraltar for Malta
22. Departure from Malta for the Archipelago.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]