Frances Wood is head of the Chinese Department at the British Library and author of A Companion to China and The Blue Guide to China, among many other scholarly works.

• * Introduction * The Bare Details * Why Go at All? Missionaries Nose to Tail * Prester John and the Magi * Not an Itinerary * The Ghost Writer and the First Fan * The Language of the Text * Omissions and Inclusions * Ice-cream and Spaghetti * Walls Within Walls * He Missed the Biggest Wall * Not Unique and Certainly Not a Siege Engineer * Who Were the Polos? Was It China? A Significant Absence * Conclusions * Afterword