The Traveller

The Revolutionary Life of George Forster and his Search for Humanity

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George Forster was a man out of time: he journeyed to the far reaches of the known world and challenged the worldviews of eighteenth-century Europe with radical ideas about equality and freedom. Celebrated during his lifetime as a champion of freedom, women's rights and revolutionary ideals, he wrote against empire, racism and slavery and was one of the leaders of the short-lived Republic of Mainz.

The Traveller seeks to restore Forster as one of the great visionaries of his era. Following in Forster’s footsteps from Europe to Tahiti, and drawing on a wealth of correspondence mostly unpublished in English, Andrea Wulf paints a portrait of a remarkable, passionate figure unbound by place, people or establishment. She vividly conveys his extraordinary quest to find what connects us rather than what sets us apart.

Andrea Wulf’s splendid biography rescues a dizzying life… [George Forster’s] was, frankly, an almost indecently interesting life story [that] provides the contented reader with uninterrupted fascination. How many lives encompass Maori tribes, Easter Island, Habsburg Austria and the French Revolution? Wulf, the author of acclaimed books on Alexander von Humboldt and the German Romantics, tells it all with the expected panache
James Marriott, The Times

Vibrant ... invigorating ... George Forster is one of the most fascinating figures you have probably never heard of. The Traveller thrillingly revives the forgotten life of this “liberal thinker far ahead of his time." Wulf writes movingly about Forster’s unconventional marriage and his unconventional politics ... a lively new book that hums with her characteristic verve
Jennifer Szalai, New York Times

A revelatory account of the life of George Forster, whose rejection of racial hierarchies stood out amongst his peers ... At a time when racism pervaded public opinion as well as the philosophical texts of luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant, Forster moved brazenly to critique and correct them. How he was able to transcend the conventional beliefs of his day is the central question of Andrea Wulf’s new book. The richness of Wulf’s research .... injects a novelistic specificity into the scenes she reconstructs. It also allows the author to move from closely narrating the events of Forster’s life, as if perched on his shoulder, to inhabiting his interior voice as he experiences the world in real time
Nick Bartlett, Guardian

The singular and spectacular trajectory of George Forster [offers] an exemplary tour of the High Enlightenment .... In this lucent, affectionate retelling of his life, Andrea Wulf makes a convincing case for George as a thinker who has too long been dismissed or ignored ... There is a briskness to her prose and a simplicity to her structure ... She shares his sense of wonder at the beauty of emerald islands like Tahiti as well as his outrage at the violence perpetrated by the sailors who were taking part in what was clearly a colonial project ... An irresistible biography
Peter Moore, Literary Review

Wulf’s beautifully written account of the voyage, following Forster’s captivating record, is carefully attentive to historical and cultural circumstances … Wulf tells Forster’s story with sympathy underpinned by detached analysis. As well as tracking him through libraries and archives, she followed his trail across Europe and the South Pacific, her travels adding depth to his striking impressions. Her text brings every scene to life, from Tahitian shores to London alleys, from the dusty library of Vilnius to the hectic streets of Paris ... an exhilarating work of historical imagination, recording the life of an extraordinary traveler, writer, and revolutionary figure with rare vitality and power
Jenny Uglow, New York Review of Books

For vacationers and staycationers alike comes the saga of George Forster, the eighteenth-century German-British globetrotter whose life embodied seismic changes in travel, technology, and government. The acclaimed author of The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf brings erudition and flair to Forster’s peripatetic career as teenaged crewman on Captain Cook’s global voyage. He later studied the French Revolution up close and advocated for human rights as monarchies faltered and capitalism began its steady conquest of the world. Wulf pays overdue homage to an intellectual titan and forefather of linguistics and natural history
Time Magazine, Best Books of Summer

About Andrea Wulf

Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in London and is the author of several books, including The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World (Winner of the 2015 Costa Biography Award and the 2016 Royal Society Science Book Prize) and Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self. A member of PEN American Center and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she is currently a Miller Scholar at the Santa Fe Institute.

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