ABOUT ELAND BOOKS

Eland has the largest list of classic travel books in the world.  When we use the word ‘classic’ we are not thinking to produce a set of hardbacks to look good on a bookshelf, but books that remain ever fresh, ever relevant, ever read.  This is one of the reasons why Eland has always believed in paperbacks, books that can be bent and read as you travel, and which are cheap enough to give away.  We currently sell 175 titles and are beginning to feel confident that wherever you travel, or are passionately interested in, there will be an Eland title to expand your horizon. Our ambition has always been to become a publishing house that you can place your complete trust in. We want to be part of that vital list as you check your pockets: passport, tickets, wallet, Eland. 

Travel has always embraced a wide field of writing – adventure, memoir, history, exploration and anthropology – but we have found that the single distinguishing feature of great travel books is that the reader must relish the company of the writer.  Humour, self-deprecation, wit, energy, bravery, sensuality and honesty are vital elements. The author also needs to be able to construct a narrative and know what to abandon.  A diary is seldom a travel book, for as one of our writers explained to us, if your memory is not vivid enough, why write about it.  I have explored all sorts of odd corners of North Africa and the Middle East over the last forty years, but hold it is an absolute standard that I want to read about things that I could not do.  I wish writers to remain heroic in their aspiration as well as their craft.  As the world becomes ever easier to travel in, we must demand more from our travel writers - learning the language, earning the locals trust and staying still long enough, to really understand a community, to tell their story with empathy and energy.  In the words of Pliny explained to us many years ago: ‘The fortunate man is he to whom the gods have granted the power to write what is worth recording, or to write what is worth reading, and most fortunate of all is the man who can do both.’ Or indeed the woman. 

Eland has always been aware that a well-wrought travel book can be an incredibly precious testimony, as our global economy eats up indigenous communities, flattens jungles and excavates mountains.  Despite the innately flippant nature of travel writing, never far removed from the random conversations of a passionate amateur, there can be a higher purpose: to testify to the lives that were once lived, to remember the freedoms, the laughter and the humanity within self-sufficient communities that have been swept away by our disposable, international culture.  We delight in books that reveal other ways of looking at the world, alternative ways of living, thinking and experiencing contentment.  The epic of Gilgamesh and Homer’s Odyssey are the earliest known travel books come down to us in written form, but they clearly connect us with the earliest oral traditions of humankind, that began with clans of hunter-gatherers making a songline of their journeys and migrations. These real journeys were connected with the progress of the stars and the cycle of the seasons. They were passed down the generations as tales of experience not just route maps.  Humankind has always done this, and we lose these stories of belonging at our peril. 

Eland was founded in 1982 by John Hatt and has been run by Rose Baring and Barnaby Rogerson since 2002.  We reprint at least four classic travel books a year.  Many of our titles have been suggested by our customers, and so although Eland is entirely owned by its worker-directors, it often feels like a co-operative of passionate readers.