D. H. Lawrence left England for the first time in May 1912, and began almost immediately to record his reactions to foreign cultures.

He wrote a series of travel articles intended for newspapers, two of which are published here for the first time after having been rejected as too anti-German in the tense pre-war atmosphere.

In 1915 he amplified some of these essays and wrote others for Twilight in Italy (1916), his first travel book.

Profoundly charged by the disorienting anxieties of the War, these essays evince a confidence and intellectual daring which take them well beyond the bounds of the conventional travel sketch.

All are published in this first critical edition of his 1912-16 essays, together with his eerily prophetic article, 'With the Guns', written upon the outbreak of war in 1914.