The Cambridge History of Travel Writing

Bringing together original contributions from scholars around the world, this volume traces the history of travel writing from antiquity to the Internet age. It examines travel texts of several national or linguistic traditions, introducing readers to the global contexts of the genre. From wilderness to the urban, from Nigeria to the polar regions, from mountains to rivers and the desert, this book explores some of the key places and physical features represented in travel writing. Chapters also consider the employment in travel writing of the diary, the letter, visual images, maps and poetry, as well as the relationship of travel writing to fiction, science, translation and tourism. Gender-based and ecocritical approaches are among those surveyed. Together, the thirty-seven chapters here underline the richness and complexity of this genre.

Introduction Nandini Das and Tim Youngs; Part I. Travel Writing by Period: 1. Travel writing and the ancient world Jonathan S. Burgess; 2. Medieval travel writing (I): Peregrinato and religious travel writing Mary Baine Campbell; 3. Medieval travel writing (II): beyond the Pilgrimage Sharon Kinoshita; 4. Early modern travel writing (I): print and early modern European travel writing Gerald MacLean; 5. Early modern travel writing (II): English travel writing Nandini Das; 6. Eighteenth-century travel writing Nigel Leask; 7. Nineteenth-century travel writing Carl Thompson; 8. Travel writing after 1900 Tim Youngs; Part II. Travel Writing in a Global Context: 9. Arabic travel writing Daniel Newman; 10. Indian travel writing Supriya Chaudhuri; 11. Chinese travel writing Xiaofei Tian; 12. Travel writing from Eastern Europe Alex Drace-Francis; 13. Italian travel writing Nathalie C. Hester; 14. Hispanic travel writing Claire Lindsay; 15. Travel writing in French Charles Forsdick; 16. North American travel writing Wendy Martin; 17. Australian travel writing Anna Johnston; 18. African travel writing Rebecca Jones; Part III. Perspectives on Travel Writing: Section 1. Place and Travel Writing: 19. Travel and the city Victoria E. Thompson; 20. Travel and the desert Roslynn Haynes; 21. Travel writing and rivers Robert Burroughs; 22. Travel and mountains Amrita Dhar; 23. Polar travel Elizabeth Leane; 24. Travelling in wilderness Debbie Lee; Section 2. Forms: 25. Advice on the art of travel Daniel Carey; 26. Travelogues, diaries, letters Zoë Kinsley; 27. Travel writing and cartography Jordana Dym; 28. Travel and poetry Christopher M. Keirstead; 29. Visual images in travel writing Stephanie Leitch; 30. Travel and fiction Janicke Stensvaag Kaasa; 31. Scientific travel Michael F. Robinson; 32. Travel in the digital age Paul Longley Arthur and Tom van Nuenen; Section 3. Approaching Travel Writing: 33. Gender and travel writing Robert Aldrich; 34. Ecocriticism and travel Kylie Crane; 35. Translation and travel writing Susan Bassnett; 36. Travel writing and tourism Agnieszka Sobocinska and Richard White.

Nandini Das is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. She works on Renaissance literature and cultural history, with special emphasis on travel and cross-cultural encounters between Europe and Asia. Her publications include Robert Greene's Planetomachia (2007) and Renaissance Romance: The Transformation of English Prose Fiction, 1570–1620 (2011). She is volume editor of Elizabethan Levant Trade and South Asia in the forthcoming edition of Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffikes, and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1598–1600 and director of the project 'Travel, Transculturality and Identity in Early Modern England' (TIDE), funded by the European Research Council.
Tim Youngs is Professor of English and Travel Studies at Nottingham Trent University (NTU), where he is director of the Centre for Travel Writing Studies. His many books on travel writing include Travellers in Africa: British Travelogues, 1850–1900 (1994), The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (edited with Peter Hulme, Cambridge, 2002), Travel Writing in the Nineteenth Century: Filling in the Blank Spaces (ed., 2006) and The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing (Cambridge, 2013). He is the founding editor of the journal Studies in Travel Writing.