With the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s and the renewal of French fishing along Newfoundland's French Shore , French writers became interested in life in Newfoundland. This anthology, originally published in French and now expertly translated into English, provides an image of Newfoundland shaped over many years of writings By French voyagers sailors and naval officers, diplomats, scientists, journalists, artists, and other visitors who described this region and its people for their readers back in France. This collection of their accounts, besides describing the French visitors of Newfoundland's transformation from colony to country, of Newfoundlanders and their lifestyle, and of the development of Newfoundland's own political and social institutions and the changes brought about as France relinquished its historical fishing rights to the English.