Imagination, curiosity, ambition, acquisitiveness and intellectual activity have all served as impetuses for transnational lives. Historical subjects’ diverse stories show how some have travelled the globe in the pursuit of intellectual and commercial enterprises, while others have crossed linguistic and cultural boundaries without travelling abroad. Ann Lane’s intriguing story of the imperial entrepreneur Henry Wickham shows the interconnections between imperialism, scientific curiosity and commercial ambition. The British Empire of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries spawned Wickham’s experiments in botanical transplantation, which ranged from complete failures to spectacular success. Wickham showed that Enlightenment-inspired taxonomy was integrally linked with individual and imperial adventuring. Australia’s second Prime Minister, Alfred Deakin, exemplifies how an avid reader can ‘look out’ on the world while staying put. Mark Hearn catalogues and discusses Deakin’s astonishingly extensive and varied reading lists of a late stage of his life. His intellectual tastes for French literature, idealism, spiritualism and theosophy, the philosophy of Henri Bergson and William James, the works of Rudyard Kipling and Olive Schreiner, among many others, show the extent to which this founder of the Australian nation saw himself as a citizen of the world. Intellectual engagement enabled such a reader to be at once an introvert and a cosmopolitan.