TRAVEL WRITING

INTRODUCTION

Travel Writing, literary genre, widely acknowledged and popular for centuries, the subject of which is generally a journey to or through a foreign country. Debate continues over a precise definition of this literary form. It is usually recognized by its adherence to one or more of the following conventions: a non-fictional narrative written in the first person singular (or plural), describing a journey—less often a period of residence—in a foreign country, full of observations of landscapes encountered, including their geography, flora, and fauna, and of the lifestyles, history, and social customs of the human inhabitants.
In addition to providing such empirical information, travel writing invariably contains a strong element of adventure. Often this centres on the exciting incidents thrown up by the itinerary, or the historical dramas associated with locations visited by the narrator. Another strong tradition in contemporary travel writing, given that it is a predominantly Western literary form, is a romantic longing for a vanished Eden, which has been banished by industrialization in the writers' native countries, but is still discernible in the people and landscapes of foreign places.

EARLY HISTORY

The idea of a journey through unknown lands has been a compelling model for authors since the very origins of Western literature. The archetypal example is the epic poem from the 9th century BC, the Odyssey by Homer, which recounts Odysseus' long voyage from the Trojan wars to his home island of Ithaca.
Not only have writers been drawn to the journey as a subject, but European audiences have been endlessly fascinated by descriptions of foreign lands and people. Much of the enduring appeal and vitality of the works of the Greek historian Herodotus, from the 5th century BC, are attributed to his extensive first-hand descriptions of non-Greek lands, which he compiled during his travels in Asia Minor, North Africa, and the Black Sea region.

The work which probably most shaped the modern travel book, and which inspired the greatest number of imitators, was a product of the late Middle Ages. Travels, by Marco Polo, was a medieval bestseller and remains one of the most famous travel books ever. It recounts the 13th-century trade mission of a Venetian noble to the Chinese realm of Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. Mixing acute social observation, authentic history, and fantastic legend—such as Polo's account of men with tails and dogs' faces—the Travels provided Europe with some of its most up-to-date information on the Far East and Chinese society. It helped reawaken European interest in travel and was one of the inspirations for the transatlantic journeys of Christopher Columbus and his own search for China's celebrated wealth.

TRAVEL WRITING IN THE IMPERIAL AGE

It is no mere coincidence that one of the periods of the travel book's greatest popularity was also the epoch of Western imperial expansion and scientific development. The genre perfectly matched the preoccupations of post-Renaissance Europe. Travel books, with their tales of strange lands, exotic peoples, and unfamiliar life forms, satisfied a growing public appetite for novelty and expanding horizons. Typical of these works are the published letters of explorers like Hernán Cortés, which offered to Europe its first tantalizing glimpses of the extraordinary Aztec empire of Mexico.
Travel writing, however, satisfied more than a simple armchair curiosity. These works provided Europe's commercial and military adventurers with much practical information on geography, navigation, land routes, trade goods, and potential new markets. In Britain, travel writing of this kind reached its fullest expression during the late 19th century and the period of African colonization. Missionary Travels (1857) by David Livingstone, First Footsteps in Africa (1856) and The Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860) by Richard Burton, and Through The Dark Continent (1878) and In Darkest Africa (1890) by Henry Morton Stanley, are some of the best-known examples. All are distinguished by their great length, serious tone, minute attention to geographical and natural historical detail, and vast amounts of ethnological information of African tribes.

TRAVEL WRITING IN THE 20TH CENTURY

With the virtual completion of terrestrial exploration at the beginning of this century, travel writers generally moved away from the traditions of straight empirical reportage.
The Scottish writer Norman Douglas, for example, pioneered a much more literary and artful travel book, filled with meditations on landscape, culture, and philosophy. In Siren Land (1911) and Old Calabria (1915), Douglas celebrated the pagan warmth, sensuality, and colourful folk traditions of the southern Italian peasantry.
Douglas's richly textured prose and idyllic representations of Mediterranean life were subsequently echoed in the books of a number of British philhellenes, notably Robert Byron's The Station (1928), Prospero's Cell (1945), Reflections on a Marine Venus (1953), and Bitter Lemons (1957) by Lawrence Durrell, and Patrick Leigh Fermor's Mani (1958) and Roumeli (1966). All hark back to a simpler pastoral golden age, in contrast to the utilitarian banality of industrial northern Europe.
The explorer Wilfred Thesiger has shared with these writers and others, like the novelist Norman Lewis, a romantic attachment to pastoral or nomadic peoples, and a sense of nostalgic loss at the destruction of their wilderness lands and at the passing of their simpler values. In Arabian Sands (1959), The Marsh Arabs (1964), and Desert, Marsh, and Mountain (1978) Thesiger has powerfully and lovingly described the now vanished lifestyles of Arabian and African nomads. In a similar vein Norman Lewis's A Dragon Apparent (1951) portrayed the Buddhist civilizations of Indochina before their destruction during the Vietnam War, while his Voices of the Old Sea (1984) described fishing communities of the Spanish Mediterranean before the advent of mass tourism.
Other modern writers have exploited the comic anomalies and picaresque adventures of travel, as well as the perceived strangeness of foreign people and customs, to produce books of non-fictional comedy. Two of the finest and best-known British writers working either side of World War II are Peter Fleming (Brazilian Adventure, 1933; News From Tartary, 1936) and Eric Newby (A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, 1958; Slowly Down The Ganges, 1966).
Exponents of a far more biting and satirical humour, used to expose what they have seen as the absurd pretensions, and moral and political shortcomings of foreign peoples, have included the English novelist Evelyn Waugh (Ninety-Two Days, 1934; Waugh in Abyssinia, 1936) and the American novelist Paul Theroux (The Old Patagonian Express, 1978; The Happy Isles of Oceania, 1992).
Throughout the past 150 years travel writers, confronted by mass tourism, have repeatedly lamented the end of “genuine” travel and the demise of travel writing. The variety of forms, which the genre has assumed this century belies these, prophesies and underlines the travel book's continued vitality and popularity.