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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Arresting ... pacy ... a compelling case for that lately much-maligned form, the single-life biography. In Forster, one sees the Enlightenment arguing with itself: its empiricism turned against its own racism, its universalism turned against its tendency to restrict the scope of its own ideals ... Wulf’s methods are largely archival, but enlivened by the willingness to retrace her subject’s journeys without her turning the book into the story of her travels rather than Forster’s. Wulf is confident enough that the facts of such a life speak for themselves to avoid any tedious traffic in revisionary argument. She wants to remind us that Forster matters ... that one life, examined with the right attention, can contain its own world.

Nikhil Krishnan, Spectator

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

Andrea Wulf’s new book thrillingly resurrects the 18th-century polymath’s life story, recounting how he became famous by his early 20s as a traveler, scientist, and author who was ahead of his time in speaking out against racism and sexism ... Wulf came to know Forster’s mind so deeply that we follow his adventures "as if perched on his shoulder"

The Week (US)

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

Drawing on Forster's letters and later writing. Wulf shows how his close, attentive engagement with the people he met led him to question the ideas of racial hierarchy common in Europe. His account ofthe voyage was strikingly humane and anti- racist for its time . Yet Forster's radicalism is more than historical curiosity. It is an early example of how travel, when approached with curiosity and humility, reshapes our understanding of others [and] can help to calibrate your moral compass. Deep hanging out with The Traveller is time well spent

Nathaniel J. Dominy, Nature