Works by
Jan Morris
(Aka James Humphrey Morris)
(Writer)
[October 1, 1926 - ]

Biography

• Fisher's Face; or, Getting to Know the Admiral (1995)

Essays

• The Outriders: A Liberal View of Britain (1963)

• The Road to Huddersfield: A Journey to Five Continents (1963)

• Cities (1963)

• Places (1972)

• Travels (1976)

• Destinations: Essays from Rolling Stone (1980)
  Contains ten essays that brilliantly recapture the essence of places as diverse as Washington just after Watergate, Delhi under Mrs. Gandhi, Panama, Los Angeles, Southern Africa, London, Cairo at the time of the Israeli-Egyptian talks, Istanbul, Trieste, and Manhattan.

• Journeys (1984)
  Superbly written articles about cities as different as Las Vegas and Stockholm, about journeys across Europe and China, and about "romantic re-visits" to such historic sites as the Acropolis and the Taj Mahal.

• Among the Cities (1985)
  Here at last is a collection of the best work of Jan Morris, considered by many the preeminent travel writer of our age. Reviewing her most recent book, The matter of Wales, the Christian Science Monitor wrote, "With this book, Morris joins the immortals. The splendors of the prose are like Homer's sea, simply everywhere. She is an absolute master of the sentence." Included are 37 separate pieces drawn from earlier books that span Morris's entire career as well as pieces origninally written for this book. Whether taking us back to Berlin and Beirut of the 1950's or to Houston and Sydney of the 1980s, Morris depicts each place with elegance, passion and wit. She captures and conveys its complex personality and makes us see the familiar in a new light or introduces us to places off the beaten track, taking us around the globe from Sri Lanka and Cashmir to Trouville and Cozco to Wyoming and Bath. About the Author: Jan Morris is the author of such books as the Pax Britannica trilogy, Spain, Destinations, and, most recently, Journeys and The Matter of Wales.

• Locations (1992)
  Locations is an honest and insightful look at thirteen unique places from the woman who has, in her own words, been earning her living "by perpetual wandering and writing" for nearly forty years. One of the world's preeminent travel writers, Jan Morris is the author of a number of highly acclaimed volumes. And now, in Locations, she presents yet another collection of provocative essays on destinations as varied as Paris and Oslo, West Point and Chicago.
  
  These pieces reveal not so much how a place looks, feels, or sounds, but Morris's own response to a particular moment, her appreciation of history's causes and effects, her sharp eye for a telling detail, and her ability to find the meaning in a chance encounter. In Vermont, she retells with delight how, like the keys to a city, she was given the gift of a piece of lead piping from which the stallion Justin Morgan (the father of the breed of Morgan horses) had drunk. She finds Oaxaca colored violently by its Indianness, where one can hear the arcane languages of the Mixtec, Zapotec, and Ixcatec, and, five thousand feet above sea level, get a benign and hallucinatory effect of breathiness and romance. Morris captures what she calls the pungency of the Tex-Mex frontier, where one can not only find clans that maintain their immemorial feuds on both sides of the Rio Grande, but also such unexpected settlers as a "blond and smiling Swiss lady, like someone out of a Renoir" in charge of a breakfast counter in Laredo. And we experience the mood in post-Wall Berlin, where "the awful fear that used to hang over the Wall like a black cloud" has vanished, and "the soldiers of the People's Army have turned out to be human after all." For travelers, for lovers of adventure, for anyone who simply appreciates fine writing, Locations offers hours of enjoyable reading.

• O Canada!: Travels in an Unknown Country (1992)

• The Princeship of Wales (1995) with Meic Stephens, ed.
  A volume in a series of personal essays on aspects of life in contemporary Wales providing an opportunity to express radical opinions.

Fiction

Novels

• Last Letters From Hav (1985)

•  Hav (2006)

Stories

• The Upstairs Donkey, and Other Stolen Stories (1961)

• My Favourite Stories of Wales (1987), Jan Morris, ed.
  A collection of favourite stories of Wales, compiled and edited by the well-known writer and broadcaster to celebrate the longevity and variety of the Welsh narrative tradition.

History

• Coronation Everest (1958)

The Pax Britannica Trilogy

1. Pax Britannica: The Climax of an Empire (1968)
   This centerpiece of the trilogy captures the British at the height of their vigor and self-satisfaction, imposing their traditions and tastes, their idealists and rascals, on diverse peoples of the world. Index.

2. Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress (1973)
   The opening volume of Morris’s “Pax Britannica Trilogy,” this richly detailed work traces the rise of the British Empire, from the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne in 1837 to the celebration of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

3. Farewell The Trumpets: An Imperial Retreat (1978)
   This concluding volume brings readers up to the death of Winston Churchill in 1965.

Memoir

• Conundrum (1974)
  The great travel writer Jan Morris was born James Morris. James Morris distinguished himself in the British military, became a successful and physically daring reporter, climbed mountains, crossed deserts, and established a reputation as a historian of the British empire. He was happily married, with several children. To all appearances, he was not only a man, but a man’s man.
  
  Except that appearances, as James Morris had known from early childhood, can be deeply misleading. James Morris had known all his conscious life that at heart he was a woman.
  
  Conundrum, one of the earliest books to discuss transsexuality with honesty and without prurience, tells the story of James Morris’s hidden life and how he decided to bring it into the open, as he resolved first on a hormone treatment and, second, on risky experimental surgery that would turn him into the woman that he truly was.

• Pleasures of a Tangled Life (1989)

• Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (2001)
  One hundred years ago, Trieste was the chief seaport of the entire Austro-Hungarian empire, but today many people have no idea where it is. This fascinating Italian city on the Adriatic, bordering the former Yugoslavia, has always tantalized Jan Morris with its moodiness and melancholy. She has chosen it as the subject of this, her final work, because it was the first city she knew as an adult -- initially as a young soldier at the end of World War II, and later as an elderly woman. This is not only her last book, but in many ways her most complex as well, for Trieste has come to represent her own life with all its hopes, disillusionments, loves and memories.
  
  Jan Morris evokes Trieste's modern history -- from the long period of wealth and stability under the Habsburgs, through the ambiguities of Fas-cism and the hardships of the Cold War. She has been going to Trieste for more than half a century and has come to see herself reflected in it: not just her interests and preoccupations -- cities, empires, ships and animals -- but her intimate convictions about such matters as patriotism, sex, civility and kindness. Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere is the culmination of a singular career.

• A Writer's House in Wales (2002)
  Through an exploration of her country home in Wales, acclaimed travel writer Jan Morris discovers the heart of her fascinating country and what it means to be Welsh. Trefan Morys, Jan Morris’s home between the sea and the mountains in the remote northwest corner of Wales, is the 18th-century stable block of her former family house nearby. Surrounding it are the fields and outbuildings, the mud, sheep, and cattle of a working Welsh farm.
  
  Morris regards this modest building not only as a reflection of herself and her life, but also as epitomizing the small and complex country of Wales, which has defied the world for centuries to preserve its own identity. In A Writer’s House in Wales, Morris brilliantly meditates on the beams and stone walls of the house, its jumbled contents, its sounds and smells, its memories and inhabitants, and finally discovers the profoundest meanings of Welshness.

Travel

By James Morris

• As I saw the U.S.A (1956) (by James Morris) -- Winner 1957 Cafe Royal Prize
  Also known as Coast to Coast: A Journey Across 1950s America

• Sultan In Oman (1957)

• The Market of Seleukia (1957) (by James Morris)

• South African Winter (1958) (by James Morris)

• The Hashemite Kings (1959) (by James Morris)

• Venice (1960) -- (by James Morris) -- Winner 1961 Heinemann Award

• Spain (1964, 1988)
  Originally published in 1964 when the author was still known as James Morris and somewhat revised in 1979, Spain is here reissued in a fussily designed edition. Despite the fact that it portrays the country at the point when it was about to emerge from its decades-long domination by Franco, Morris's textdiscussing landscape, legend, history, religion and architecturestands up well; but, set in small type and a long line measure, it is difficult to read. The striking illustrations, reminiscent of Miro, that decorate chapter openings and the 10 ill-chosen, sentimentally realistic paintings by various Spanish artists clash with Cecilia Eales's pleasant, washed-out watercolors with their handwritten captions.

• The Presence of Spain (1964) (by James Morris) with Evelyn Hofer

By Jan Morris

• Oxford (1965)
  'Few cities,' Jan Morris observes, 'have been much more loved, loathed, and celebrated.' This book has become a classic account of the character, history, mores, buildings, climate, and people of one of Britain's most fascinating cities. 'A book of outstanding excellence, with a sweep of knowledge and a distinction of style such as I have never before encountered in a work of this sort ... Brilliant alike in observation and imagination ... brings the very stones of Oxford to life' Sunday Telegraph.

• Great Port a Passage Through New York (1969)

• The Oxford Book of Oxford (1978)
  In this entertaining and lively anthology, Jan Morris traces the history of the university from it foundation in the Middle Ages through to 1945, combining extracts from contemporary observers with her own linking commentary. Important events in the history of the University are described and explained ( development of the college system, Magdalen's defiance of James II, Newman and the Oxford Movement), and its life and times are exalted or derided by writers ranging from Anthony Wood to Evelyn Waugh. Unworldly scholars and eccentric dons walk these pages: characters like Benjamin Jowett, Sir Maurice Bowra and William Spooner, who ordered an undergraduate to `leave by the town drain', and coined Spoonerism.

• The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage (1980)

• Stones of Empire (1983) by Jan Morris with Simon Winchester
  No empire in history built so variously as the British empire in India: the buildings there attest to the richness of an imperial presence that lasted - from the first trading settlement to the end of the Raj - some three hundred years. The attitude of the British to India was compounded partly of arrogance, but partly also of homesickness, and it shows in their constructions. Georgian terraces were adapted to tropical conditions, Victorian railway stations were elaborately orientalized, seaside villas were adjusted to suit Himalayan conditions, and everywhere the fundamental ambivalence of the British empire, a baffling mixture of good and evil, was mirrored in the imperial architecture. This book, now reissued with a new introduction by Simon Winchester, was the first to describe the whole range of British constructions in India. The text and photographs illustrate these buildings not simply as physical objects, but as reflections of an empire's mingled emotions. Stones of Empire charts an enterprise in architecture, engineering, and social adaptation unique in human history.

• The Matter of Wales: Epic Views of a Small Country (1984)
  This passionate evocation of Wales by the author Rebecca West has hailed as "perhaps the best descriptive writer of our times" encapsulates that country in all its aspects, past, present, and even future. Jan Morris shows clearly the manners of thought of the Welch people, as well as their art, their landscapes and their folklore, their ways of earning a living, their character, their meaning and their historical destiny. Half Welsh, half English herself, Morris is a historian, a travel writer, and an essayist. All three disciplines she brings to this work--a vivid tribute to a country not just on the map or in the mind but also in the heart. "All of us," Morris writes, "have some small country there."

• Scotland: The Place of Visions (1986) with Paul Wakefield

• Manhattan '45 (1987)
  In 1945, New York City stood at the pinnacle of its cultural and economic power. Never again would the city possess the unique mixture of innocence and sophistication, romance and formality, generosity and confidence which characterized it in this moment of triumph. In Manhattan '45, acclaimed travel writer and historian Jan Morris evokes the city in all its romantic grandeur. From its beguilingly idiosyncratic architectural style to its unmistakable slang, post-War New York springs to life through Morris's brisk, affectionate prose. Morris visits Wall Street, Harlem, Greenwich Village, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side. She rides the trollies, the El, the Hudson River ferries, and the Twentieth Century Limited. She dines at Schrafft's and Le Pavillon, drinks ale at McSorley's Saloon, sips Manhattans at the Manhattan Club, and spots celebrities at El Morocco. She meets Fiorello La Guardia, Robert Moses, Leo Durocher, I. B. Singer, and Dizzy Gillespie. And she tours the tenements of Hell's Kitchen and the Gashouse district, as well as the Foundling Hospital where the crushing realities of poverty belie the unchallenged exuberance of the age. Taking into account both Social Register and slum, Manhattan '45 celebrates New York's Golden Age as a place where, for one unrepeatable moment in history, anything seemed possible.

• Hong Kong (1988)

• City to City (1990)

• Wales from the Air (1990)

• Sydney (1992)

• Travels with Virginia Woolf (1993)

• Fifty Years of Europe: An Album (1997)
  "Not just anyone could do justice to Europe and how it's changed over the past 50 years. It takes a person with the longevity and experience to have known Europe since the war, a sensitivity and intelligence to reflect with insight, and the eloquence to bring it alive. It was Jan Morris's book to write, and the world is richer for her having done so. Historian, travel writer, and novelist--Morris takes an intimate trip through Europe, from Trieste at the end of World War II to booking passage on the Chunnel train and contemplating a modern, united Europe. With her keen use of language, astute eye, and personal touch, Morris narrates engagingly the pride, pathos, and ironies of Europe." -- Amazon.com

• Over Europe: Spectacular Aerial Photographs of the New Euorpe (1998)  Text by Jan Morris with Adam Woolfitt, Emil Schulthess, Michael St Maur Sheil, and Thomas Stephan.  Photographs by Daniel Philippe, Georg Gerster, Georg Riha, Guido Alberto Rossi, Horst Munzig, Leo Meier, Oddbjorn Monsen, Max Dereta, Torbjorn Andersson, and Yann Arthus-Bertrand

• Ireland: Your Only Place (1999) with Paul Wakefield

• Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest (2000)
  Brash and skeptical when she first came to the United States in the 1950, Jan Morris cast a decidedly dubious eye on the saintly image of Abraham Lincoln and the log-cabin-to-the-White House legend that surrounded him. In innumerable visits over the last fifty years she has tried to make up her own mind about the sixteenth president, and after nearly half a century she has crystallized her conclusions in this unique portrait -- part historical fact, part travelogue, part reconstruction, part personal specullation -- her first book on America since the acclaimed Manhattan '45.
  
  Renowned on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the finest writers on history and travel in this century, Morris is part of the long tradition of foreigner observers who are able to illuminate America for Americans. In Lincoln: A Foreigner's Quest, she looks at Lincoln with her singular perspective, and the result is a historical journey free of sentiment and nostalgia.
  
  Morris has not only travelled wherever Loncoln traveled, from his alleged log cabin birthplace to the box where he was assasinated, but she has willed herself into his time and, with wit and sagacity,she brings us as close as she can to the presence of the man. She conjures him in both his personal and public capacities -- politician and father, commander-in-chief in a time of national calamity, orator and husband.
  
  We sit in the chair of an Illinois judge as Lincoln the lawyer argues a case. We hear from across the road in Springfield of Lincoln's household quabbles with his wife. We take tea with President Lincoln at the White House. We imagine his responses to the seductive comforts of a slave plantation, and wonder what would have happened had he come face-to-face with his celebrated opponent in the Civil War, Robert E. Lee. Morris excavates myths about Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks; his love affair with Ann Rutledge; his marriage to the unstable Mary Todd; and his often frustrated relationships with his Union generals.
  
  With the iconclasm and humor and marvelous sense of place, Morris seamlessly blends travel narrative, history and biography into the origins of the American Empire to reveal the real Lincoln -- maverick, artist, oddball, natural aristocrat.

• In Search of England (2002) with H. V. Morton
  The book that one British newspaper has called "travel writing at its best. Bill Bryson must weep when he reads it." Whether describing ruined gothic arches at Glastonbury or hilarious encounters with the inhabitants of Norfolk, Morton recalls a way of life far from gone even at the beginning of a new century.

• The World: Travels 1950 - 2000 (2003)
  Also known as A Writer's World. 
  The World is a magnum opus by the finest travel writer in the world. Ranging from Manhattan to Venice, Oxford to the Middle East, and Paris to South Africa, the book provides Jan Morris's eyewitness accounts of such seminal moments as the first successful ascent of Everest, the historic Eichmann trial, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong. Dividing the volume into five decades, Morris presents history with an unparalleled dramatic flair, creating a riveting portrait of the twentieth century, from the political idealism of the postwar years to its more recent tensions and excesses. As much a celebratory book as a swan song that puts Morris's extraordinary career in a unique historical perspective, The World promises to create an entirely new generation of Jan Morris readers.

See also:

• Architecture of the British Empire (1986)
  by Charles Allen, Colin Amery, Gavin Stamp, and Gillian Tindall.  Jan Morris and Robert Fermor-Hesketh, eds.

• Favorite Places: A Travel & Leisure Book (1989) by Edward Hoagland, Fay Weldon, George Lang, Gwyneth Cravens, Jan Morris, Mark Halprin, Pamela Fiori, Peter Feibleman, Richard Reeves, and William Least Heat-Moon

• Jan Morris (1998) by Paul Clements

• Jan Morris: Around the World in Eighty Years (2007) by Paul Clements with Paul Theroux, Illustrator
  In honor of the 80th birthday of British travel journalist Jan Morris, her colleagues and successors have put together this celebratory, biographical tribute, which explores both the writer and her writing. By revisiting more than 50 years of descriptions of her travels, her epic three-volume history of the British Empire, and her startling and thoughtful memoir about her sex change, the volume contains many full, intimate insights into her character from renowned contributors, including Alan Whicker, Arturo di Stefano, Colin Thubron, David Fieldhouse, Don Geroge, David Hurn, Erica Wagner, Geoffrey Moorhouse, George Band, Hilary Rubenstein, Jim Perrin, Patrick Nairn, Peregrine Wortsthorne, Pico Iyer, Robert McCrum, and Simon Winchester