The New Traveller's Almanac was a series of writings included in the back of all six issues of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II is a comic book limited series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, published under the America's Best Comics imprint of DC Comics...

, covering the timeline and the world of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill, publication of which began in 1999. The series spans two six-issue limited series and a graphic novel from the America's Best Comics imprint of Wildstorm/DC, and a third miniseries...

.

The six issues covered the British Isles

British Isles

The British Isles are a group of islands off the northwest coast of continental Europe that include the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and over six thousand smaller isles. There are two sovereign states located on the islands: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and...

, Continental Europe

Continental Europe

Continental Europe, also referred to as mainland Europe or simply the Continent, is the continent of Europe, explicitly excluding European islands....

, the Americas

Americas

The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...

, Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

 and the Middle East

Middle East

The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

 and the Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

s, and the Polar Region

Polar region

Earth's polar regions are the areas of the globe surrounding the poles also known as frigid zones. The North Pole and South Pole being the centers, these regions are dominated by the polar ice caps, resting respectively on the Arctic Ocean and the continent of Antarctica...

s. In the Volume II collection, the Almanac was collected into a single 46-page document. All of the information from it was drawn from pre-existing literary sources (such as Shakespearean plays or the Cthulhu Mythos

Cthulhu Mythos

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

).

The Almanac is written in the style of a declassified document from MI5

MI5

The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...

 taken from a government library. It is notable in introducing characters such as Prospero, Orlando

Roland

Roland was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. Historically, Roland was military governor of the Breton March, with responsibility for defending the frontier of Francia against the Bretons...

, and Allan Quatermain, Jr. who will later become main characters in The Black Dossier and Volume Three. The travel reports, mostly compiled from log entries by Mina Murray

Mina Harker

Wilhelmina "Mina" Harker is a fictional character in Bram Stoker's 1897 horror novel Dracula.- In the novel :She begins the story as Miss Mina Murray, a young school mistress who is engaged to Jonathan Harker, and best friends with Lucy Westenra...

, Prospero and Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo, also known as Prince Dakkar, is a fictional character featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island ....

 (and occasionally quote from them, including Prospero's log written entirely in iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet"...

), scan over every part of the world in several chapters.

Buried in the exhausting prose are various hints at portions of the story not covered by the graphic novel portion of the volume, such as the adventures of earlier leagues, Murray's correspondence with Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

, Murray and Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain

Allan Quatermain is the protagonist of H. Rider Haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Mines and its various prequels and sequels. Allan Quatermain was also the title of a book in this sequence.- History :...

's search for the fountain of youth

Fountain of Youth

The Fountain of Youth is a legendary spring that reputedly restores the youth of anyone who drinks of its waters. Tales of such a fountain have been recounted across the world for thousands of years, appearing in writings by Herodotus, the Alexander romance, and the stories of Prester John...

 known as the "Pool of Fire and Life" or "the Fire of Life," and their investigation of H. P. Lovecraft

H. P. Lovecraft

Howard Phillips Lovecraft --often credited as H.P. Lovecraft — was an American author of horror, fantasy and science fiction, especially the subgenre known as weird fiction....

-style phenomena and parallel universes for the British government.

The narrator is at times intentionally ignorant, obfuscating literary references and plot points so that they serve as easter eggs. For example, the narrator refers to Murray's visit to "an elderly bee-keeper who resided near the seaside cove of Fulworth". Those familiar with "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane

The Adventure of the Lion's Mane

"The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is one of 12 stories in the cycle collected as The Case Book of Sherlock Holmes. It is notable for being narrated by Holmes himself, instead of by Dr...

" will recall that Sherlock Holmes retires to Fulworth to keep bees.