Literature of Travel and Exploration

Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.

Jennifer Speake

Entries include: Afghanistan; Airplane; Alexander the Great (356-323 BC); Atlantic Ocean: Middle Passage; Backpacking; Baker, Samuel White (1821-93); Balkans; Byrd, William (1674-1744); Byzantine Empire; Canals; Champlain, Samuel de (1567-1635); Children's travel writing; Cook, James (1728-79); Diaries; Dickens, Charles (1812-70); East India Company (Dutch); Fantasy travel; France: pre-revolutionary; Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1749-1832); Golden Fleece, Quest for; Henry the Navigator voyages; Hunting and big game expeditions; Iceland; Journalists and journalism; Kashmir; Landscape and topography; Melville, Herman (1819-91); Mesopotamia; Military memoirs; Northwest Frontier; Pizarro, Francisco (c. 1478-1541); Race and ethnicity, issues of; Royal Geographical Society; Sahara Desert; Siberia; Slave narratives (New World); Space travel and exploration; Timbuktu; Verne, Jules (1828-1905); Vespucci, Amerigo (1451-1512)