The Traveller

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 *
Fascinating … a compelling life [that] presages our present-day attitudes to global difference, race and diversity. Wulf cleaves closely to archival verities, avoiding any tendency towards overembellished writing – Robert Mayhew * Times Literary Supplement *
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 *
Powerful … exemplary … Andrea Wulf draws on Forster’s publications and personal archives to reconstruct the trajectory of this remarkable, compellingly humane, figure – Sudhir Hazareesingh * Spectator *
Award-winning historian Wulf draws on abundant archival sources to create a meticulously researched life of George Forster — Polish-born naturalist, ethnographer, explorer, and German revolutionary. Wulf amply restores his stature as a brilliant mind [in this] stirring, empathetic portrait * Kirkus Reviews *
The dauntless Andrea Wulf has gone adventuring, and returned with this enthralling account of young, nomadic George Forster. Her superb narrative shimmers with scholarly detail and magnificently sustains the “breathless exhilaration” of his journeys, his extraordinarily liberal and observant mind and the intense emotional drama of his life. A combination of panoramic travelogue and tender psychological study animated at every point by Wulf’s own travels and research, The Traveller is hypnotically successful and wonderfully restores George Forster as a major historical figure of early European Romanticism – Richard Holmes
As George Forster circumnavigates the globe, Wulf circumnavigates the Enlightenment mind in all its complexity, making for a doubly brilliant and breathtaking adventure – Sue Prideaux
Unfailingly and inspiringly humane, George Forster is the overlooked tragic hero of the European Enlightenment. With her characteristic combination of scholarship and empathy, Andrea Wulf conjures the global range of his curiosity, and the poignant wilderness of his family life. This book is the memorial that he has long deserved – Neil MacGregor

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)
• 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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