
`I am looking for something more mysterious. For the path you read about in books, the old lane choked with undergrowth, whose entrance the weary prince could not discover.`
- Alan Fournier Walkers, like lovers of literature, are driven by the urge to explore, & writers have blessed their fictional characters with itchy feet since the earliest of narratives. Milton`s Adam & Eve leaving Eden, Mrs Yeobright`s maternal anxiety spurring her across country in Hardy`s The Return of the Native, militant miners in Zola`s Germinal. Walks found in novels, short stories & even drama can have a multitude of meanings. Editor Duncan Minshull here forges a bold path through the greatest of the world`s literature, collecting extracts from Dickens & Dostoevsky, Proust & Poe, Kipling, Kafka & many more to show imaginations time & again set in motion by the simple act of walking.