Travel Writing, Geography and

Travel writing, by definition, is geographic. It narrates the experiences of observing places and moving through space and links travel with representation. A translation of what is seen into what is read, travel writing is of interest to geographers for its description and representation of different parts of the world. This entry discusses what constitutes travel writing, how human geographers have studied it, and what role travel writing has played in both the history of geography and the historical geographies of colonialism and imperialism. Although travel itself—whether long or short distance, temporary or permanent—is a nearly universal human experience, studies of travel writing have focused primarily on 18th- and 19th-century European and North American travelers, leaving much room for future work.

As a genre, travel writing ranges from books and serialized accounts published by well-known authors to unpublished diaries and journals kept by ordinary travelers, from texts by explorers and scientists traveling under the auspices of governments and crowns to letters by men and women traveling for pleasure. Over time, travel writing's meaning has changed. In the early 16th century, travel writings were considered forms of art and education, while in the late 17th century, they were central to the production of scientific knowledge about the “New World.” By the late 18th century, being well versed in travel writing was a sign of good taste among the European public. Across these shifts, travel writing's popularity grew, and by the 19th century, travel narratives were bestsellers.

Page from Chapters CXXIII and CXXIV of the book II Milione (The Travels of Marco Polo), originally

published in 1298–1299 but frequently reprinted and translated

Source: Public domain.

As transportation technologies reduced the costs and difficulties of travel throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, travel writers tried to distance their work from the growing number of tourism publications. Pointing to tourism's supposed crassness, travel writers went to great lengths to show their commitment to uncovering the “authentic” character of the sites they visited and to demonstrate the value of their own firsthand experience of places. In doing so, however, travel writers did not simply “uncover” the places discussed but, instead, actively constituted them, often through comparison with familiar landscapes. In comparing, for example, the American [Page 2879]West with an English landscape, British travelers textually produced the new through images of the old, even as they faced the challenge of ensuring that the unfamiliar, whether Egypt or the Amazon, remained different enough to maintain travel's exotic allure.

Within human geography, travel writings have been used in various ways. In some cases, they have been treated as valuable firsthand accounts of places, such as colonial South America, or events, such as the U.S. Civil War. In other instances, travel writings have been analyzed as literary texts; and geographers have interrogated the discursive and intertextual strategies through which travelers both represented places and peoples and were in dialogue with genres from scientific and military writings to novels and political texts. More recently, geographers have used travel writings to examine how travel writers’ own senses of self were differently affected by the acts of traveling and writing.

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