In 1775, a young Philadelphia Quaker was sent by his father to gather detailed information on business conditions in the British Isles. Fisher's travels took him throughout Britain and Ireland, even across the English Channel, and the journals that record his observations provide a fascinating and distinctive commentary on the economic and social life of the time.

The travel journals are supplemented by Fisher's cameos of merchants in the major trading centres, with lists of all the goods handled. Dr Morgan's edition makes available a text that adds up to a late eighteenth-century version of Defoe's famous Tour.