In this inaugural edition of our Atlas Pocket Classics series, Diane Johnson introduces three masterpieces of travel writing. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey is the notebook he kept during his respite from poor health, tormented love, and inadequate friends—a thoroughly entertaining account of the French people and their country. James Fenimore Cooper’s Gleanings in France, one of his rarest works, is an elegant collection of his letters home; he offers a discriminating portrait of France in the last days of its final experiment with monarchy, and offers practical advice on the art of travel. Edith Wharton proclaims in the opening lines of A Motor-flight through France that “the motor-car has restored the romance of travel”—then sets off in the new invention to explore the cities and countryside of the nation she loved above all; Wharton’s spirited account of her journey is a declaration of her passion for travel and her deep affinity for the people and places of France.