Travel literature is travel writing considered to have value as literature. Travel literature typically records the people, events, sights and feelings of an author who is touring a foreign place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary.
To be called literature the work must have a coherent narrative, or insights and value, beyond a mere logging of dates and events, such as diary or ship's log. Literature that recounts adventure, exploration and conquest is often grouped under travel literature, but it also has its own genre outdoor literature; these genres will often overlap with no definite boundaries. This article focuses on literature that is more akin to tourism.
Travel literature is not to be confused with travel guides, usually a series put out by a publisher, each dealing with a particular country, city or region. These are useful for travellers, as they provide a wealth of information on hotels, restaurants, major sights, travel tips etc. The writers are often specialists who travel and write these books for a living.
Types of travelogues
Some travel writers are people who travel and make their livings by writing about it. The Americans William Least Heat-Moon (b. 1940) and Paul Theroux (b. 1941), the Welsh author Jan Morris (b. 1926) and the Englishman Eric Newby (1919–2006) come to mind, although Morris is also known as an historian and Theroux as a novelist.
Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works of Sally Carrighar (1895–1985), Ivan T. Sanderson (1911–1973) and Gerald Durrell (1925–1995). These authors are naturalists who write to support their great passion. Both Durrell and Sanderson can be quite funny. Charles Darwin (1809–1882) wrote his famous account of the journey of HMS Beagle at the intersection of science, natural history and travel.
Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or it may involve travel to different regions within the same country. Accounts of spaceflight may also be considered as travel literature.
The systematic study of travel literature emerged as a legitimate field of scholarly inquiry in the mid-1990s, with its own conferences, organizations, journals, monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias. Among the most 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 presentation 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 nineteenth 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.
Encouraged by these pioneering studies, buoyed by the popularity of Foucauldian criticism, galvanized by Edward Said's postcolonial landmark Orientalism (1978), and fueled by a growing interdisciplinary preoccupation with cultural diversity, globalization, and migration, the study of travel writing was burgeoning in the late 1990s. The first international travel writing conference, ?Snapshots from Abroad,? organized by Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota in 1997, attracted over one hundred scholars from around the world and led to the foundation of the International Society of Travel and Travel Writing (ISTW). The same year saw the first issue of Studies in Travel Writing, a journal edited by Tim Youngs, director of the Notthingham Trent Centre for Travel Writing Studies. After 1997, annual scholarly conferences about travel writing, held in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, led to a sustained growth of the field, which in turn sparked an unprecedented upswing in the number of monographs and essay collections about travel literature being published, as well as a proliferation of travel writing anthologies.
Major directions in recent travel writing scholarship include: studies about the role of gender in travel and travel writing (e.g. Women Travelers in Colonial India: The Power of the Female Gaze [1998] by Indira Ghose); explorations of the political functions of travel (e.g. Radicals on the Road: The Politics of English Travel Writing in the 1930s [2001] by Bernard Schweizer); postcolonial perspectives on travel (e.g. English Travel Writing: From Pilgrimages to Postcolonial Explorations (2000) by Barbara Korte); and studies about the function of language in travel and travel writing (e.g. Across the Lines: Travel, Language, and Translation [2000] by Michael Cronin). Tim Youngs is a driving force behind the growth of the field, notably through the journal Studies in Travel Writing, through his two co-edited volumes of essays on travel writing, Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (2002), co-edited with T. Hulme, and Perspectives in Travel Writing (2004), co-edited with G. Hooper; Youngs also co-organized the 2005 travel writing conference, ?Mobilis in Mobile,? in Hong Kong. Kristi Siegel is another prolific editor of travel writing scholarship, having edited Issues in Travel Writing: Empire, Spectacle and Displacement (2002) as well as Gender, Genre, and Identity in Women?s Travel Writing (2004).
Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) — A 1,181-page look at Yugoslavia in 1937 by the pro-Serb West and a fascinating, if less than objective, account of this land before the tragedies of World War II and the 1990s wars.
Khyber Caravan: Through Kashmir, Waziristan, Afghanistan, Baluchistan and Northern India (1936) — A somewhat curmudgeonly account of 1934 travels in British India by a later famous Canadian journalist and television personality.
Richard Halliburton (1900?1939), one of the most famous explorers and adventure writers of his generation:
The Royal Road to Romance, The Flying Carpet, New Worlds to Conquer, The Glorious Adventure, Seven League Boots
The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958) — Auberon Waugh (1939–2001) described van der Post as the person in whose company he'd most like to spend an evening. This book by the South African soldier/explorer/writer suggests why.
Prospero's Cell: A Guide to the Landscape and Manners of the Island of Corcyra (1945) — This text describes Durrell's time in Corfu. It should be read in tandem with his brother Gerald's My Family and Other Animals.
Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953) — Durrell's experiences in Rhodes.
A Time Of Gifts (1977) — A journey by an 18 year old in 1933/4 overland from the Hook of Holland to Hungary, rewritten in old age from long lost notes.
My Family and Other Animals (1956) — A description of an idyllic childhood on Corfu in the 1930s by the brother of Lawrence Durrell (1912–1990). This text combines natural observations, humour, storytelling, and travel.
Batten, Charles Lynn, Pleasurable Instruction: Form and Convention in Eighteenth Century Travel Literature (1978)
Chatzipanagioti, Julia: Griechenland, Zypern, Balkan und Levante. Eine kommentierte Bibliographie der Reiseliteratur des 18. Jahrhunderts. 2 Vol. Eutin 2006. ISBN 3981067428
Speake, Jennifer (2003), ed. Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia. 3 vol. [N.p.]: Routledge. ISBN 1-57958-247-8.
Stolley, Karen. El lazarillo de ciegos caminantes: un itinerario crítico. Ediciones del Norte. (1992)
Fussell, Paul Jr. "Patrick Brydone: The Eighteenth-Century Traveler as Representative Man." Literature as a Mode of Travel. New York Public Library Bulletin. (1963)
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