John Taylor (1580-1653), usually referred to as "the water poet", was a Gloucester born, self-educated Thames wherryman turned pamphleteer and versifier, who published some 200 works in his lifetime. His output ranges from popular reference books and directories to "penny-dreadful"-style reportage, political and religious tracts and poems, accounts in verse and prose of madcap journeys, and even a joke book. He was an ebullient character, whose experiences included service in the Elizabethan navy, theatre life in Shakespeare"s London, Royalist Oxford in the Civil War, and an old age running a Covent Garden pub during the Commonwealth. Between 1618 and 1653 he undertook 12 journeys from London to most parts of England, Scotland and Wales. He travelled by river, sea and road, first seeking sponsorship from subscribers to the account that he would write on the way. The resulting pamphlets - among them "Pennyles Pilgramage" (1618), an account of a journey from London to Edinburgh on foot, and "The Praise of Hemp-seed" (1620, the story of a journey down the Thames from London to Queenborough in a brown paper boat - full of vivid descriptions of people and places. This book presents the full text of the 12 British journeys, in chronological order, with a general introduction on Taylor and his antecedents, and brief introductions to each journey. There are also explanatory notes on obscure passages, and allusions and references to people and places.