Travels and Adventures of the REV. Joseph Wolff D.D. LL.D.

Published in 1861 this work in the third person dictated by Joseph Wolff (17951862) to friends is an epic miscellany of stories. Wolff the son of a rabbi had a peripatetic Middle European childhood. He converted to Christianity in 1812 studying Near Eastern languages in Vienna and Tbingen and theology in Rome until he was expelled by the Inquisition for heretical views. He eventually moved to England working for the London Society for Promoting Christianity amongst the Jews. Beginning his mission in the Middle East he later travelled to Afghanistan Ethiopia India and the United States where he preached to Congress. His eventful career saw him variously shipwrecked enslaved and forced to walk without clothes for 600 miles following a robbery. In 1847 he settled more quietly in a Somerset vicarage. Though characteristically orientalist (and with possible embellishments) this work remains an invigorating depiction of a lifetime''s adventure.