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Travel literature

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Template:Short description Template:Redirect Template:Literature The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

HistoryEdit

File:ColombusNotesToMarcoPolo.jpg
Handwritten notes by Christopher Columbus on a Latin edition of The Travels of Marco Polo

Early examples of travel literature include the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (generally considered a 1st century CE work; authorship is debated), Pausanias' Description of Greece in the 2nd century CE, Safarnama (Book of Travels) by Nasir Khusraw (1003-1077), the Journey Through Wales (1191) and Description of Wales (1194) by Gerald of Wales, and the travel journals of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1214), Marco Polo (1254–1354), and Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), all of whom recorded their travels across the known world in detail. As early as the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata discussed history and travel writers who added embellished, fantastic stories to their works.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The travel genre was a fairly common genre in medieval Arabic literature.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In China, 'travel record literature' (Template:Zh) became popular during the Song dynasty (960–1279).<ref name="hargett 67">Hargett 1985, pp. 67.</ref> Travel writers such as Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641) incorporated a wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing, while the 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose. Chinese travel literature of this period was written in a variety of different styles, including narratives, prose, essays and diaries, although most were written in prose.<ref name="hargett 67 93">Hargett 1985, pp. 67–93.</ref> Zhou Daguan's account of Cambodia in the thirteenth century is among the major sources for the city of Angkor in its prime.

One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of travelling for the sake of travel and writing about it, is Petrarch's (1304–1374) ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336. He states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at the bottom he called frigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Ill, a poet for the Duke of Burgundy, travelled through the Jura Mountains in 1430 and recorded his personal reflections, his horrified reaction to the sheer rock faces, and the terrifying thunderous cascades of mountain streams.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Antoine de la Sale (Template:Circa), author of Petit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Islands in 1407, leaving us with his impressions. "Councils of mad youth" were his stated reasons for going. In the mid-15th century, Gilles le Bouvier, in his Livre de la description des pays, gave us his reason to travel and write:<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

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Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go, and travel, I have begun this little book.{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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By the 16th century, accounts to travels to India and Persia had become common enough that they had been compiled into collections such as the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("New World") by Simon Grynaeus, and collections by Ramusio and Richard Hakluyt.<ref name=remy>Template:Cite book</ref> 16th century travelers to Persia included the brothers Robert Shirley and Anthony Shirley, and for India Duarte Barbosa, Ralph Fitch, Ludovico di Varthema, Cesare Federici, and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten.<ref name=remy /> Humanist travellers in Europe also produced accounts, often noting monuments and inscriptions, e.g., Seyfried Rybisch's Itinerarium (1570s), Michel de Montaigne's Journal de voyage (1581), Template:Ill Voyage d'Italie (1585) and Aernout van Buchel's Iter Italicum (1587–1588).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In the 18th century, travel literature was commonly known as "books of travels", which mainly consisted of maritime diaries.<ref name="stolley 26">Stolley 1992, p. 26.</ref> In 18th-century Britain, travel literature was highly popular, and almost every famous writer worked in the travel literature form;<ref name="fussell 54">Fussell 1963, p. 54.</ref> Gulliver's Travels (1726), for example, is a social satire imitating one, and Captain James Cook's diaries (1784) were the equivalent of today's best-sellers.<ref>Glyndwr Williams, Captain Cook's Voyages: 1768–1779. London: The Folio Society, 1997, p. xxxii.</ref> Alexander von Humboldt's Personal narrative of travels to the equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799–1804, originally published in French, was translated to multiple languages and influenced later naturalists, including Charles Darwin.

Other later examples of travel literature include accounts of the Grand Tour: aristocrats, clergy, and others with money and leisure time travelled Europe to learn about the art and architecture of its past. One tourism literature pioneer was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) with An Inland Voyage (1878), and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), about his travels in the Cévennes (France), is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Travel with a Donkey in the Cevennes Template:Webarchive (1879); Re the first sleeping bag in 1876</ref><ref> Template:Cite news </ref>

Other notable writers of travel literature in the 19th century include the Russian Ivan Goncharov, who wrote about his experience of a tour around the world in Frigate "Pallada" (1858), and Lafcadio Hearn, who interpreted the culture of Japan with insight and sensitivity.<ref>Nonfictional prose: Travel and epistolary literature Template:Webarchive Encyclopedia Britannica</ref>

The 20th century's interwar period has been described as a heyday of travel literature when many established writers such as Graham Greene, Robert Byron, Rebecca West, Freya Stark, Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh were traveling and writing notable travel books.<ref>Casey Blanton Travel Writing, Routledge 2013</ref>

In the late 20th century there was a surge in popularity of travel writing, particularly in the English-speaking world with writers such as Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Jonathan Raban, Colin Thubron, and others. While travel writing previously had mainly attracted interest by historians and biographers, critical studies of travel literature now also developed into an academic discipline in its own right.<ref>Alasdair Pettinger Travel Writing Template:Webarchive Oxford Bibliographies</ref>

Travel booksEdit

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Travel books come in styles ranging from the documentary, to the literary, as well as the journalistic, and from memoir to the humorous to the serious. They are often associated with tourism and include guide books.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Travel writing may be found on web sites, in periodicals, on blogs and in books. It has been produced by a variety of writers, including travelers, military officers, missionaries, explorers, scientists, pilgrims, social and physical scientists, educators, and migrants.

Travelogues are a special kind of texts that sometimes are disregarded in the literary world. They weave together aspects of memoir, non-fiction, and occasionally even fiction to produce a story that is equally about the trip and the goal. Throughout history, people have told stories about their travels like the ancient tales of explorers and pilgrims, as well as blogs and vlogs in recent time. A "factual" piece detailing a trip to a distant country is that the travelogue emerged as a significant item in late nineteenth-century newspapers. Short stories genre of that era were influenced directly and significantly by the travelogues that shared many traits with short stories. Authors generally, especially Henry James and Guy de Maupassant, frequently wrote travelogues and short tales concurrently, often using the same countries as their settings.

Travel literature often intersects with philosophy or essay writing, as in V. S. Naipaul's India: A Wounded Civilization (1976), whose trip became the occasion for extended observations on a nation and people. This is similarly the case in Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941),<ref>West, Rebecca, intr. Geoff Dyer, (2006). Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia. Edinburgh.</ref> focused on her journey through Yugoslavia, and in Robin Esrock's series of books about his discoveries in Canada, Australia and around the globe.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Fictional travel narratives may also show this tendency, as in Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) or Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974).

Sometimes a writer will settle into a locality for an extended period, absorbing a sense of place while continuing to observe with a travel writer's sensibility. Examples of such writings include Lawrence Durrell's Bitter Lemons (1957), Bruce Chatwin's widely acclaimed In Patagonia (1977) and The Songlines (1987),<ref>Albin Krebs Bruce Chatwin, 48, Travel Writer And Author of 'Songlines,' Dies Template:Webarchive New York Times January 19, 1989</ref> Deborah Tall's The Island of the White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island (1986),<ref>Bonnie Gross, "'White Cow` Absorbing Account Of Irish Island The Island Of The White Cow: Memories Of An Irish Island. By Deborah Tall". March 2, 1986, News/Sun-Sentinel.</ref> and Peter Mayle's best-selling A Year in Provence (1989) and its sequels.

Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works by Sally Carrighar, Gerald Durrell and Ivan T. Sanderson. Sally Carrighar's works include One Day at Teton Marsh (1965), Home to the Wilderness (1973), and Wild Heritage (1965). Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals (1956) is an autobiographical work by the British naturalist. It tells of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. It is the first and most well-known of Durrell's "Corfu trilogy", together with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods (1978).

Ivan T. Sanderson published Animal Treasure, a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa; Caribbean Treasure, an account of an expedition to Trinidad, Haiti, and Surinam, begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; and Living Treasure, an account of an expedition to Jamaica, British Honduras (now Belize) and the Yucatán. These authors are naturalists, who write in support of their fields of study.

Another naturalist, Charles Darwin, wrote his famous account of the journey of HMS Beagle at the intersection of science, natural history and travel.<ref>"Review of Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle between the Years 1826 and 1836 ... & Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the various Countries visited by H.M.S. Beagle ...". The Quarterly Review. 65: 194–234. December 1839.</ref>

A number of writers famous in other fields have written about their travel experiences. Examples are Samuel Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); Charles Dickens' American Notes for General Circulation (1842); Mary Wollstonecraft's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796); Hilaire Belloc's The Path To Rome (1902); D. H. Lawrence's Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916); Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (1927); Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941); and John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962).<ref>"Sorry, Charley" Template:Webarchive, Bill Steigerwald, Reason, April 2011 "A Reality Check for Steinbeck and Charley" Template:Webarchive, Charles McGrath, New York Times, April 3, 2011</ref>

The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom is a prolific travel writer. Among his many travel books is the acclaimed Roads to Santiago.<ref>Journeys of the mind Template:Webarchive The Guardian 25 March 2006</ref> Englishmen Eric Newby,<ref name=NYT>Margalit Fox, "Eric Newby, 86, Acclaimed British Travel Writer, Dies", The New York Times, 24 October 2006. Template:Webarchive.</ref> H. V. Morton, the Americans Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, and Welsh author Jan Morris are or were widely acclaimed as travel writers (though Morris has frequently claimed herself as a writer of 'place' rather than travel per se).<ref>Template:Cite AV mediaTemplate:Cbignore</ref> Canadian travel writer Robin Esrock has written a series of books<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> about discovering unique experiences in Canada, Australia and around the world.

Bill Bryson in 2011 won the Golden Eagle Award from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On 22 November 2012, Durham University officially renamed the Main Library the Bill Bryson Library for his contributions as the university's 11th chancellor (2005–11).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Paul Theroux was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast, which was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name. He was also awarded in 1989 the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Riding the Iron Rooster.

In 2005, Jan Morris was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The French writer, Lucie Azema, has noted that the majority of travel writing is by men and even when women have written travel books, these tend to be forgotten. In her book Les femmes aussi sont du voyage (Women are also travellers), she has argued that male travel writing gives an unequal, colonialist and misogynistic view of the world.<ref name=Manifesto>Template:Cite news</ref>

Adventure literatureEdit

In the world of sailing Frank Cowper's Sailing Tours (1892–1896)<ref name="TYM_291">Template:Cite magazine</ref> and Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) are classics of outdoor adventure literature.<ref>Joshua Slocum Society Template:Webarchive.</ref>

Jules Verne's adventure novels are classical examples of adventure literature. Some of his most famous novels are Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the World in Eighty Days.

Guide booksEdit

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File:Claife Station.jpg
Claife Station, built at one of Thomas West's 'viewing stations', to allow visiting tourists and artists to better appreciate the picturesque English Lake District.

A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists".<ref>New Oxford American Dictionary</ref> An early example is Thomas West's guide to the English Lake District, published in 1778.<ref>Thomas West, (1821) [1778]. A Guide to the Lakes in Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire. Kendal: W. Pennington.</ref> Thomas West, an English priest, popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to the Lake District of 1778. In the introduction he wrote that he aimed:

to encourage the taste of visiting the lakes by furnishing the traveller with a Guide; and for that purpose, the writer has here collected and laid before him, all the select stations and points of view, noticed by those authors who have last made the tour of the lakes, verified by his own repeated observations.<ref name=West2>Template:Cite book</ref>

To this end he included various 'stations' or viewpoints around the lakes, from which tourists would be encouraged to appreciate the views in terms of their aesthetic qualities.<ref name=development>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Published in 1778 the book was a major success.<ref name=NPA>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Mariana Starke popularized what became the standard travel guide, a reference book that can include information relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are also often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet. Travel guides can also take the form of travel websites.

Travel journalsEdit

File:Goethe's Italian Journey.png
Goethe's Italian Journey between September 1786 and May 1788

A travel journal, also called road journal, is a record made by a traveller, sometimes in diary form, of the traveler's experiences, written during the course of the journey and later edited for publication. This is a long-established literary format; an early example is the writing of Pausanias (2nd century CE) who produced his Description of Greece based on his own observations. James Boswell published his The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides in 1786 and Goethe published his Italian Journey, based on diaries, in 1816. Fray Ilarione da Bergamo<ref>Daily Life in Colonial Mexico: The Journal of Friar Ilarione da Bergamo, 1761-1768. Translated by William J. Orr. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press 2000</ref> and Fray Francisco de Ajofrín wrote travel accounts of colonial Mexico in the 1760s. Fannie Calderón de la Barca, the Scottish-born wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico 1839–1842, wrote Life in Mexico, an important travel narrative of her time there, with many observations of local life.

A British traveller, Mrs Alec Tweedie, published a number of travelogues, ranging from Denmark (1895) and Finland (1897), to the U.S. (1913), several on Mexico (1901, 1906, 1917), and one on Russia, Siberia, and China (1926). A more recent example is Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries. A travelogue is a film, book written up from a travel diary, or illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by traveller.<ref>New Oxford American Dictionary.</ref> American writer Paul Theroux has published many works of travel literature, the first success being The Great Railway Bazaar.

In addition to published travel journals, archive records show that it was historically common for travellers to record their journey in diary format, with no apparent intention of future publication, but as a personal record of their experiences. This practice is particularly visible in nineteenth-century European travel diaries.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Anglo-American Bill Bryson is known for A Walk in the Woods, made into a Hollywood film of the same name.<ref name="variety.com">Template:Cite news</ref>

Slave travel narrativesEdit

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The writings of escaped slaves of their experience under slavery and their escape from it is a type of travel literature that developed during the 18th and 19th centuries, detailing how slaves escaped the restrictive laws of the southern United States and the Caribbean to find freedom. As John Cox says in Traveling South, "travel was a necessary prelude to the publication of a narrative by a slave, for slavery could not be simultaneously experienced and written."<ref name="john cox 65">Cox, John D. 2005, p. 65</ref>

A particularly famous slave travel narrative is Frederick Douglass' autobiographical Narrative, which is deeply intertwined with his travel experiences, beginning with his travels being entirely at the command of his masters and ending with him traveling when and where he wishes.<ref name="john cox 66">Cox, John D. 2005, pp. 66-67</ref> Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave is a more traditional travel narrative, and he too overcomes the restrictions of law and tradition in the south to escape after he is kidnapped and enslaved.<ref name="john cox 68">Cox, John D. 2005, p. 68</ref> Harriet Ann Jacobs' Incidents includes significant travel that covers a small distance, as she escapes one living situation for a slightly better one, but also later includes her escape from slavery to freedom in the north.<ref name="john cox john 127">Cox, John D. 2005, pp. 127-129</ref>

FictionEdit

Some fictional travel stories are related to travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguish fictional from non-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in the famous instance of the travel writings of Marco Polo or John Mandeville. Examples of fictional works of travel literature based on actual journeys are:

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Travel blogsEdit

In the 21st century, travel literature became a genre of social media in the form of travel blogs, with travel bloggers using outlets like personal blogs, Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and travel websites to convey information about their adventures, and provide advice for navigating particular countries, or for traveling generally.<ref name="TJEPIC">F. Hanusch, E. Fürsich, Travel Journalism: Exploring Production, Impact and Culture (2014), p. 100-101.</ref> Travel blogs were among the first instances of blogging, which began in the mid-1990s.<ref name="TJEPIC"/>

Notable travel bloggers include Matthew Kepnes, Johnny Ward,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Drew Binsky.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

ScholarshipEdit

The systematic study of travel literature emerged as a field of scholarly inquiry in the mid-1990s, with its own conferences, organizations, journals, monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias. Important, pre-1995 monographs are: Abroad (1980) by Paul Fussell, an exploration of British interwar travel writing as escapism; Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990) by Marianna Torgovnick, an inquiry into the primitivist presentations of foreign cultures; Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (1991) by Dennis Porter, a close look at the psychological correlatives of travel; Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing by Sara Mills, an inquiry into the intersection of gender and colonialism during the 19th century; Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt's influential study of Victorian travel writing's dissemination of a colonial mind-set; and Belated Travelers (1994), an analysis of colonial anxiety by Ali Behdad.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Travel awardsEdit

Prizes awarded annually for travel books have included the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award, which ran from 1980 to 2004, the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature, and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award, which began in 2006. The Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards, which began in 1985, are given by the SATW Foundation, and include two awards for travel books and travel guidebooks, as well as awards for travel coverage in publications, websites, and broadcast and audio-visual formats, and for magazine, newspaper, and website articles in a variety of categories. The National Outdoor Book Awards also recognize travel literature in the outdoor and adventure areas, as do the Banff Mountain Book Awards. The North American Travel Journalists Association holds an annual awards competition honoring travel journalism in a multitude of categories, ranging across print and online media.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

Further readingEdit

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  • Bangs, Jeremy D.: "The Travels of Elkanah Watson" (McFarland & Company, 2015)
  • Beautiful England (series of travel books from 1910 to 1950s)
  • Hannigan, Tim: The Travel Writing Tribe (C Hurst & Co, 2021) 360 p Essay Template:ISBN<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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External linksEdit

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