During the winters of 1882-83 and 1883-84, the intrepid explorers Theodore and Mabel Bent left their home and opulent lifestyle in London’s fashionable West End to meander around 21 far-flung Greek islands in search of adventure in the exotic Levant. They travelled by steamer, sail-boat, mule and on foot, staying in the finest houses, the humblest dwellings and under open skies, often sharing their sleeping quarters with brigands, fleas and domestic animals. Along the way, Mabel penned her diary and Theodore made notes recounting their amazing adventures, the local customs, music, dance and much more. In 1885 he published his account of their adventures in his book – ‘The Cyclades or Life Among the Insular Greeks’.

They were the original Greek Island hoppers!

Although Theodore’s account is over 130 years old, it still fires the imagination and provides the perfect itinerary for the modern-day, island-hopping explorer. Many of the places they visited are now well-established on the tourist map but traces still remain of the old Greece described in the book – often just around the corner from the busy resorts. Follow the Bents to the real Cyclades and let them lead you to places that will burn themselves into your memory forever.

Next time you’re off to Greece, download a copy of Theodore’s e-book to your tablet, phone or other e-book reader. When you tire of the beach, jump the next bus or ferry, let serendipity be your guide and JOIN THE ADVENTURE.

Enjoy your adventure - oh – and don’t forget to tell us about your experiences and discoveries via the blog on the companion website the-cyclades.click. In Mabel’s words we wish you ‘a Happy Home-coming, the best wish a traveller may have’.

The original print edition of ‘The Cyclades or Life Among the Insular Greeks’ was published in 1885 and ran to over 500 pages. It quickly became a best-seller in an age when readers were hungry for tales of foreign adventure and discovery.

It’s still possible to buy a printed copy to read at home before you leave for your adventure. You can browse the print editions available on the companion website and you can order them on-line.

We felt that such an important cultural and historical work was worthy of a sympathetic restoration and relaunch to make it available to today’s readers and travellers. To that end, we developed the digital edition of The Cyclades. Our edition is a true, re-flowable e-book, not a fixed-format PDF copy of the original books. We’ve lovingly digitised the content to produce a high-quality e-book that you can load onto your preferred reading device – iPad, iPhone, Android, Kindle or any other e-reader capable of handling books in the industry-standard EPUB format.

We published the e-book as part of the click•book series, a novel concept combining travel and travel literature into an adventure that puts you into the shoes of the author — you’ll feel like travel companions on the same exciting journey. In this series, we’ve taken the best of the travel literature genre and used them as itineraries that will turn your trips into adventures.

The e-book is only part of the story — the other part is on the companion website, the-cyclades.click, intimately interwoven with the book. The website is growing organically as more readers add their own stories, comments, experiences and pictures.

The e-book is perfect for travelling, certainly because of the reduced weight essential for today’s air travellers, but also, because most e-book reading devices have the ability to bookmark pages, highlight text and add your own notes to sections of the text. You can plan your trip while at home by bookmarking and highlighting sections to re-read while you are travelling and adding notes to remind you about something you must do, or look for, or take a photograph of while you are there.

We’ve made improvements to the layout of the book, which, together with the e-reader’s navigation, bookmarking and note-making, make it more usable for the casual reader, the traveller and those with a more scholarly interest in Theodore’s writings. It’s now a much more enjoyable read for everyone.

1. We’ve incorporated an active, tappable/clickable, table of contents for the overall book

2. We’ve added hyperlinks to the companion website to augment the contents of the book, providing photographs and articles on places visited by Theodore and Mabel.

3. Where the companion website expands upon a topic in the book in some detail, we’ve included a click•book icon that will take you seamlessly to the relevant page of the website.

4. To illustrate the geographic area being discussed by Theodore, we’ve added hyperlinks to interactive maps on the companion website which you can scroll, enlarge or shrink.

5. We’ve included side panels containing additional material that we feel is best presented within the flow of the book itself rather than as a clickable web link. Some side panels contain hyperlinks to the companion website, or to external websites, to further expand upon the material presented in the side panel.

6. Theodore’s book is peppered with references to people, Greek mythology, places, historical events etc. To help you achieve maximum enjoyment from the e-book, we’ve hyperlinked these references to various websites so that a simple click or tap will take you quickly to information on the particular subject.

7. Theodore liked to include snippets in Greek and other languages in his writings, for which we’ve attempted to provide a translation.

As explained above, the digital edition employs the use of footnotes and hyperlinks.

Where Theodore included footnotes at the end of a page, we’ve converted this to a digital footnote which can be clicked or tapped after the word ^note to which it applies. Different e-reader devices handle the display of footnotes in different ways. Some display a pop-up box overlaying part of the page while others move to a separate page which requires you to click a link at the bottom of the footnote to return to where you were.

In some cases, we felt that we should provide some clarification on Theodore’s subject matter directly in the book rather than on the website. In these cases the footnote ^dnote provides additional information added to the digital edition that was not present in the original edition.

A specific form of footnote is used where we’ve replaced Theodore’s Greek script with English script. As an example, in the phrase Zoí mou! ^gr we’ve moved Theodore’s original Greek characters to the footnote, together with a translation, and show the English transliterated characters forming the Greek word instead.