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What You Should Know About Travel Writing

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Travel writing is a form of creative nonfiction in which the narrator's encounters with foreign places serve as the dominant subject. Also called  travel literature .

"All travel writing—because it is writing—is made in the sense of being constructed, says Peter Hulme, "but travel writing cannot be made up without losing its designation" (quoted by Tim Youngs in  The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing , 2013).

Notable contemporary travel writers in English include Paul Theroux, Susan Orlean, Bill Bryson , Pico Iyer, Rory MacLean, Mary Morris, Dennison Berwick, Jan Morris, Tony Horwitz, Jeffrey Tayler, and Tom Miller, among countless others.

Examples of Travel Writing

• "By the Railway Side" by Alice Meynell
• Lists and Anaphora in Bill Bryson's "Neither Here Nor There"
• Lists in William Least Heat-Moon's Place Description
• "London From a Distance" by Ford Madox Ford
• "Niagara Falls" by Rupert Brooke
• "Nights in London" by Thomas Burke
• "Of Trave," by Francis Bacon
• "Of Travel" by Owen Felltham
• "Rochester" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Observations About Travel Writing

Authors, journalists, and others have attempted to describe travel writing, which is more difficult to do than you might think. However, these excerpts explain that travel writing—at a minimum—requires a sense of curiosity, awareness, and fun.

Thomas Swick

• "The best writers in the field [of travel writing] bring to it an indefatigable curiosity, a fierce intelligence that enables them to interpret, and a generous heart that allows them to connect. Without resorting to invention , they make ample use of their imaginations. . . . "The travel book itself has a similar grab bag quality. It incorporates the characters and plot line of a novel, the descriptive power of poetry, the substance of a history lesson, the discursiveness of an essay , and the—often inadvertent—self-revelation of a memoir . It revels in the particular while occasionally illuminating the universal. It colors and shapes and fills in gaps. Because it results from displacement, it is frequently funny. It takes readers for a spin (and shows them, usually, how lucky they are). It humanizes the alien. More often than not it celebrates the unsung. It uncovers truths that are stranger than fiction. It gives eyewitness proof of life’s infinite possibilities." ("Not a Tourist." The Wilson Quarterly , Winter 2010)

Casey Blanton

• "There exists at the center of travel books like [Graham] Greene's Journey Without Maps or [V.S.] Naipaul's An Area of Darkness a mediating consciousness that monitors the journey, judges, thinks, confesses, changes, and even grows. This narrator , so central to what we have come to expect in modern travel writing , is a relatively new ingredient in travel literature, but it is one that irrevocably changed the genre . . . . "Freed from strictly chronological , fact-driven narratives , nearly all contemporary travel writers include their own dreams and memories of childhood as well as chunks of historical data and synopses of other travel books. Self reflexivity and instability, both as theme and style , offer the writer a way to show the effects of his or her own presence in a foreign country and to expose the arbitrariness of truth and the absence of norms." ( Travel Writing: The Self and the World . Routledge, 2002)

Frances Mayes

• "Some travel writers can become serious to the point of lapsing into good ol' American puritanism. . . . What nonsense! I have traveled much in Concord. Good travel writing can be as much about having a good time as about eating grubs and chasing drug lords. . . . [T]ravel is for learning, for fun, for escape, for personal quests, for challenge, for exploration, for opening the imagination to other lives and languages." (Introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2002 . Houghton, 2002)

Travel Writers on Travel Writing

In the past, travel writing was considered to be nothing more than the detailing of specific routes to various destinations. Today, however, travel writing has become much more. Read on to find out what famous travel writers such as V.S. Naipaul and Paul Theroux say about the profession.

V.S. Naipaul

• "My books have to be called ' travel writing ,' but that can be misleading because in the old days travel writing was essentially done by men describing the routes they were taking. . . . What I do is quite different. I travel on a theme . I travel to make an inquiry. I am not a journalist. I am taking with me the gifts of sympathy, observation, and curiosity that I developed as an imaginative writer. The books I write now, these inquiries, are really constructed narratives." (Interview with Ahmed Rashid, "Death of the Novel." The Observer , Feb. 25, 1996)

Paul Theroux

• - "Most travel narratives—perhaps all of them, the classics anyway—describe the miseries and splendors of going from one remote place to another. The quest, the getting there, the difficulty of the road is the story; the journey, not the arrival, matters, and most of the time the traveler—the traveler’s mood, especially—is the subject of the whole business. I have made a career out of this sort of slogging and self-portraiture, travel writing as diffused autobiography ; and so have many others in the old, laborious look-at-me way that informs travel writing ." (Paul Theroux, "The Soul of the South." Smithsonian Magazine , July-August 2014) - "Most visitors to coastal Maine know it in the summer. In the nature of visitation, people show up in the season. The snow and ice are a bleak memory now on the long warm days of early summer, but it seems to me that to understand a place best, the visitor needs to see figures in a landscape in all seasons. Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. You see that the population is actually quite small, the roads are empty, some of the restaurants are closed, the houses of the summer people are dark, their driveways unplowed. But Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "Winter is a season of recovery and preparation. Boats are repaired, traps fixed, nets mended. “I need the winter to rest my body,” my friend the lobsterman told me, speaking of how he suspended his lobstering in December and did not resume until April. . . ." ("The Wicked Coast." The Atlantic , June 2011)

Susan Orlean

• - "To be honest, I view all stories as journeys. Journeys are the essential text of the human experience—the journey from birth to death, from innocence to wisdom, from ignorance to knowledge, from where we start to where we end. There is almost no piece of important writing—the Bible, the Odyssey , Chaucer, Ulysses —that isn't explicitly or implicitly the story of a journey. Even when I don't actually go anywhere for a particular story, the way I report is to immerse myself in something I usually know very little about, and what I experience is the journey toward a grasp of what I've seen." (Susan Orlean, Introduction to My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere . Random House, 2004) - "When I went to Scotland for a friend's wedding last summer, I didn't plan on firing a gun. Getting into a fistfight, maybe; hurling insults about badly dressed bridesmaids, of course; but I didn't expect to shoot or get shot at. The wedding was taking place in a medieval castle in a speck of a village called Biggar. There was not a lot to do in Biggar, but the caretaker of the castle had skeet-shooting gear, and the male guests announced that before the rehearsal dinner they were going to give it a go. The women were advised to knit or shop or something. I don't know if any of us women actually wanted to join them, but we didn't want to be left out, so we insisted on coming along. . . ." (Opening paragraph of "Shooting Party." The New Yorker , September 29, 1999)

Jonathan Raban

• - "As a literary form, travel writing is a notoriously raffish open house where different genres are likely to end up in the bed. It accommodates the private diary , the essay , the short story, the prose poem, the rough note and polished table talk with indiscriminate hospitality. It freely mixes narrative and discursive writing." ( For Love & Money: Writing - Reading - Travelling 1968-1987 . Picador, 1988)
• - "Travel in its purest form requires no certain destination, no fixed itinerary, no advance reservation and no return ticket, for you are trying to launch yourself onto the haphazard drift of things, and put yourself in the way of whatever changes the journey may throw up. It's when you miss the one flight of the week, when the expected friend fails to show, when the pre-booked hotel reveals itself as a collection of steel joists stuck into a ravaged hillside, when a stranger asks you to share the cost of a hired car to a town whose name you've never heard, that you begin to travel in earnest." ("Why Travel?" Driving Home: An American Journey . Pantheon, 2011)
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Travel Writing by Alasdair Pettinger LAST REVIEWED: 31 July 2019 LAST MODIFIED: 31 July 2019 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199846719-0119

A minimal definition of travel writing might be any account of a journey or description of a place that is based on firsthand experience. As such, it may be found in many different kinds of text: diaries, letters, postcards, newspaper and magazine articles, blogs, essays, official reports, promotional brochures, and ethnographies, as well as travel books. Travel writing is often distinguished from guidebooks on the one hand and imaginative fiction, drama, and poetry on the other, but the term may sometimes include them, especially when discussing writings from before the 19th century, when such distinctions would have carried less weight with authors and readers. While it has long served as a vital source material by historians and biographers, travel writing rarely, even in those cultural histories documenting the “images” of or “attitudes” toward “other” races or nationalities that proliferated in the 1960s and 1970s, attracted the kind of close critical attention commonly given to literary fiction until the 1980s, coinciding with several related developments. First, there was an increasingly politicized self-questioning within literary studies and anthropology, combined with an interdisciplinary theoretical sophistication. Second, beyond the academy, there was a surge in popularity of literary travel writing, associated with authors such as Bruce Chatwin, Jonathan Raban, Paul Theroux, Colin Thubron, and others, promoted especially in the English-speaking world by Granta magazine. Within two decades, travel-writing studies could claim to be an academic discipline in its own right, with dedicated journals, textbooks, research centers, and conferences. If most of the influential early studies were dominated by anglophone critics studying anglophone texts, the field has since broadened significantly. Nevertheless, many studies of travel writing, without announcing it in their titles, continue to be largely concerned with English-speaking authors, often British. The reasons for restricting their scope in this way are rarely explicitly addressed; it is as if this is a default position for the scholars concerned rather than because “British and Irish travel writing” is a coherent object of study as such. As in many other fields, “British” is often used when “English” would be more accurate, and “English” sometimes silently includes texts that might be better described as Scottish, Welsh, or Irish.

The growth of travel-writing studies as an academic discipline has generated a number of general introductions to the subject aimed at students, typically offering a combination of historical overviews and discussions of key topics such as genre, techniques of representation, narrative organization, the relationship with the reader, and the treatment of race, nation, and gender. Blanton 1997 , Gannier 2001 , and Thompson 2011 provide the most-approachable introductions, while Hulme and Youngs 2002 , Youngs 2013 , Thompson 2015 , and Das and Youngs 2019 survey the field in more depth and reflect its shifting preoccupations. Most of these works acknowledge the difficulty in defining “travel writing.” Borm 2004 makes a case for a broad definition that includes fictional as well as nonfictional writing, but the decision made in Youngs 2013 to restrict it to “predominantly factual, first-person prose accounts that have been undertaken by the author-narrator” (p. 3) is more typical.

Blanton, Casey. Travel Writing: The Self and the World . Studies in Literary Themes and Genres 15. New York: Twayne, 1997.

Short historical overview, focusing on “the modern travel book,” with close readings of texts by James Boswell, Mary Kingsley, Graham Greene, Peter Matthiessen, V. S. Naipaul, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, and Roland Barthes. Includes useful list of recommended titles and a survey of critical scholarship.

Borm, Jan. “Defining Travel: On the Travel Book, Travel Writing and Terminology.” In Perspectives on Travel Writing . Edited by Glenn Hooper and Tim Youngs, 13–26. Studies in European Cultural Transition 19. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.

Argues for a broad definition of “travel writing” (or “travel literature”) to include “texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel” (p. 13), while restricting the terms “travel book” or “travelogue” to predominantly nonfictional narratives.

Das, Nandini, and Tim Youngs, eds. The Cambridge History of Travel Writing . Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

The thirty-six essays here collectively showcase the latest scholarship on the genre, exhibiting historical depth and a truly global reach, extending well beyond North American and Western European authors. Includes sections that examine writings about different kinds of places, analyze a wide range of literary forms, and profile a selection of critical approaches.

Gannier, Odile. La littérature de voyage . Thèmes & Études. Paris: Ellipses, 2001.

Short introduction, drawing on mainly francophone examples but tackling general issues such as the definition of travel writing, the relationship between author and reader, representation, language, and tourism.

Hulme, Peter, and Tim Youngs, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing . Cambridge Companions to Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Fifteen essays by leading scholars in the field, arranged in three sections dealing with particular historical periods, key geographical regions, and general topics (gender, ethnography, and theory). Includes useful chronology and extensive guide to further reading.

Thompson, Carl. Travel Writing . New Critical Idiom. New York: Routledge, 2011.

DOI: 10.4324/9780203816240

A concise introduction that offers a broad historical overview and discussions of major topics such as the definition of the genre, authority and veracity, representation of the self and the other, and gender. Close readings of a small group of texts by representative authors from William Dampier to Bill Bryson.

Thompson, Carl, ed. The Routledge Companion to Travel Writing . Routledge Literature Companions. London: Routledge, 2015.

Forty-two essays that approach the subject from a wide range of historical, geographical, theoretical, thematic, and stylistic perspectives. Especially important for its coverage of themes (ethics, corporeality) and subgenres (guidebooks, blogs, dark tourism) that are relatively new areas of interest to travel-writing scholars.

Youngs, Tim. The Cambridge Introduction to Travel Writing . Cambridge Introductions to Literature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

An impressive condensation of a wide range of scholarship, illustrated by insightful readings of representative primary texts from the Middle Ages to the early 21st century. Reflects more-recent trends with its attention to travel writers of non-European descent and closes by identifying some emerging developments that are likely to be important in the coming decades.

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The Best Travel Literature of All Time

Like many travellers, you may have found yourself immersed in the voyages of those who have gone before you from time to time. While living vicariously is no replacement for being on the road, there are some utterly wonderful nonfiction travel books out there, which are the next best thing.

A Time of Gifts by Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

It’s quite genuinely impossible to create a comprehensive list of the best travel literature. While there’s a lot of replication of these types of lists out there, some books endure precisely because of their importance at the time or to other writers. Although some authors listed below deserve to have more than one of their books featured on this compendium of the greatest travel literature, only their finest work has been included. Consider it your gateway to that writer’s greater oeuvre, if you’ve not read any of their work previously; a reminder if you have. Similarly, non-male writers have often been unfortunately overlooked in the past and some real gems that deserve to be on the best travel literature of all-time lists have been overlooked.

The following aims to redress the balance a little. Consideration is also given to some of the works that defined people who are now better-known for their other exploits, because there’s no greater adventure than that of somebody whose travels inspired them to do something more important or lasting in the world beyond merely moving through space and time for travel’s sake. Here are twenty of the best pieces of travel literature ever written (theoretically), to guide you to your next read, to find inspiration for your next trip, or to simply use as a general reading checklist until your next journey.

A Time of Gifts (1977) – Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor

Writing about Paddy Leigh Fermor in 2020, it would be easy to dismiss the great writer as a privileged individual who was fortunate to stay with royalty and the well-to-do all across Europe as he sauntered from one place to the next. But that would be an awful disservice. A Time of Gifts is the first of a trilogy of books documenting his journey, on foot, from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople (Istanbul). His scholarship and complete immersion in every culture he encountered helped his writing transcend mere travel literature to reach a higher level of writing. You never feel as though he’s an outside observer trying to make sense of the foreign by superimposing his own beliefs. His prose has been described as baroque, and is densely layered with a deep intelligence, understanding and, above all, passion for everything he encounters. The trip itself was undertaken in 1933/4 and the Europe that Fermor uncovers on his peregrinations is one which is beginning to spiral blindly into major conflict. Somehow this aspect makes the random acts of kindness he experiences across Germany and the rest of the continent even more bittersweet.

Publisher: John Murray, Buy at Amazon.com

Arabian Sands (1959) – Sir Wilfred Thesiger

Arabian Sands by Wilfred Thesiger (Photo: courtesy of P.S. Burton via Wikimedia Commons)

Another travel literature classic is Thesiger’s intrepid anthropological look at Bedouin culture and lifestyle in one of the remotest, most inhospitable places on earth: the Arabian Peninsula’s Rub’ al Khali. The setting for the journey is amid the embers of World War II, the repercussions of which were being felt worldwide, including among the Bedouin tribes who’d lived much in the same way they always had until the outside world intruded. In effect, this book offers a snapshot of a remarkable culture that was fast altering, which is what makes this, and many of the books written during the reign of the British Empire, fascinating historical documents. For all of the rightful condemnation of European colonialism, one thing is clear in this book: the fascination and inquisitive nature of the many British scholarly individuals sent to far-reaching corners of the globe created an immensely valuable cache of first-person accounts of cultures and peoples that may not have been recorded otherwise amid the inevitable and inescapable rise of globalisation of the time.

Publisher: Penguin Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1942) – Rebecca West

West’s voluminous, in-depth examination of Yugoslavia during her time travelling there in 1937 was designed to explore how the country was a reflection of its past. West spent six weeks journeying across the whole region with her husband and meeting eminent citizens along the way. Sadly, by the time the book was published, the Nazis had invaded and the country would never be the same again, which makes this yet another invaluable early-20 th -century document. What sets Black Lamb and Grey Falcon apart though is the level of exquisite detail and research dedicated to the subject. If there was any proof required that travel literature serves an invaluable purpose as a piece of primary historical evidence, then this may well be it.

Publisher: Canongate Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon by Rebecca West (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Border (2017) – Kapka Kassabova

Beautifully written and layered with a real sense of atmosphere, Kassabova’s haunting Border is one of the standout pieces of travel writing to be published in the last decade. Eastern Europe is one of the least explored regions of the world in travel literature. Owing perhaps in part to the secrecy and legacy of distrust brought about by the Cold War, even those who have travelled through as part of longer journeys (Paul Theroux in Pillars of Hercules or Bill Bryson in Neither Here Nor There ) scarcely shed any real light on the region. Here, Kassabova heads back to the nation of her birth (Bulgaria) to explore the fragments of political ideology, faith and race, and the blurred lines between them, that have developed around the border region separating Bulgaria from Greece and Turkey.

Publisher: Granta Books, Buy at Amazon.com

Border by Kapka Kasabova (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) – George Orwell

While much of travel literature is concerned with the voyage and seeking out the miraculous, the unique and the lesser known, Orwell took another route entirely. Down and Out in Paris and London does exactly what it says on the tin. It is a memoir of impoverished living in two of the world’s great cities, at a time when they were global beacons in terms of both power and culture. Not only does this book, in a very prescient move, eschew the superior tone of academia when examining the other, it also avoids all glamour in those cities, focussing entirely on the poor, the meek and the desperate. In Paris he lives on the edge of eviction, working the kitchens of a fancy establishment, while in London he lives the life of a tramp, moving from one bunkhouse and soup kitchen to the next, living day to day. It is to travel writing what the ‘method’ is to acting.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1972) – Hunter S. Thompson

The outlier on this list (all good lists need one) is Hunter S. Thompson’s delightfully absurd, occasionally apocryphal and downright debauched novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas . In it, he created a new way of writing known as gonzo journalism, a style of storytelling which is found most commonly today in some documentaries, where the lines of fact and fiction become blurred and with the journalist placed as a central character in the story. This brilliant commentary on the flexible and inconsistent nature of truth was perfectly epitomised by the increasingly hallucinogenic recollections of protagonist Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo. The road trip to Las Vegas ultimately casts important light on an American society gripped by racism and violence (partly why the story is still so powerful today is that America hasn’t yet learned to grow up). As such it remains one of the most intriguing snapshots of America out there, surpassing the work of many strait-laced travel narratives in the process.

Publisher: Random House Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson (Photo: Mathieu Croisetière via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975) – Paul Theroux

A perfect example of how gonzo journalism began to seep into travel literature comes from what is arguably the most important modern travelogue: The Great Railway Bazaar . In it, Theroux travels from London all the way to Southeast Asia and Japan, via India, then back to Europe via Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway. While Theroux upholds elements of the old school travel narrative – like the scholarly, studious approach and the inquisitive air – his journey by train is as much about the growing backpacker, hippie, trail and the western counterculture that encouraged it. Occasionally the line between fact and fiction is blurred in his writing, but only to better convey his interactions with the people he met. As such, you get a fascinating look at what could be called modern colonialism, whereby the train networks that were often built by colonial rulers in non-European nations across the world, like India and Burma, were now being used by a new generation in the post-colonial era to explore these newly-sovereign nations.

In Patagonia (1977) – Bruce Chatwin

Coming hot on the tail of Theroux’s above book is perhaps the most popular and enduring travel book of all time: In Patagonia . Bruce Chatwin starts it off with a direct nod to writing and journalism’s slide into apocrypha by framing his trip loosely around the search for remains of a “brontosaurus” found in a Patagonian cave, which he first found languishing in his grandparent’s house. The doubtful story behind this find sets him on a road where he aim to unravel various other mysteries whose only connection is geographical, including the final resting place of Butch Cassady and the Sundance Kid, in the wild, empty spaces of South America. It’s a brilliant book formed of loose sections that don’t directly link to one another but has greatly influenced modern travel literature today.

Publisher: Vintage Classics, Buy at Amazon.com

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

In Xanadu (1989) – William Dalrymple

One of the travel writers greatly influenced by Chatwin was William Dalrymple, whose own quest for his first book, In Xanadu , was framed as a search for the fabled palace of Kublai Khan, Xanadu. This type of narrative has always proven to be a ready source of inspiration for some of the better modern travel books; searching for answers to popular mysteries. It has a journalistic bent to it, and manages to sidestep the awkwardness of westerners merely travelling abroad and casting aspersions about the people and cultures they encounter through an imperial gaze, as is the criticism often lodged again some of the earlier works of travel writing. Here, Dalrymple follows in the footsteps of Marco Polo (following footsteps of somebody famous is also a common trope of travel literature) to find the palace. While Dalrymple restores elements of the scholarly, learned approach common to writers like Robert Byron and Paddy Leigh Fermor, you can feel the impact of those 70s writers as well.

Publisher: Flamingo, Buy at Amazon.com

In Xanadu by William Dalrymple (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Into the Wild (1996) – Jon Krakauer

Few gripping travel narratives manage to capture the why? of our impulse to roam quite like Jon Krakauer does in Into the Wild . The book is both harrowing and revelatory, while performing a third-person character study on a young man he never actually met. In 1992 Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness and never came back out. The book tries to examine what had led him there in the first place, whether he’d intended to return at all, and why he wasn’t the first to try and cut all ties with modern society. Krakauer looks to others, such as Henry David Thoreau ( Walden is the original escape from society book and a must-read for anybody fascinated by this subject), who successfully parted from the rat race, as well as the reasons McCandless initially fled from well-to-do family life years before and never contacted them again in his search for something more profound and meaningful. While most readers may disagree with McCandless’s methods, his motives seem far more familiar and relatable.

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, Buy at Amazon.com

The Living Mountain (1977) – Nan Shepherd

Perhaps one of the finest pieces of nature writing ever committed to paper is The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd. Sadly, it’s also one of the most underrated books. The research for her book was undertaken in and around 1942, during the Second World War, which didn’t trouble the wilds of Scotland too badly. Here, the stark beauty of the Cairngorms seems to mirror the harsh reality of war. But Shepherd’s deep examination of the various microcosms of life that thrive on the region’s mountains is really a poem that exalts life. It’s a celebration of survival and endurance. Her wonderful book almost never made it to print, lying in a drawer for decades until a friend read it and encouraged her to seek out a publisher. We’re lucky it did.

The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Motorcycle Diaries (1992) – Che Guevara

Even if Che Guevara never became the revolutionary and icon of a generation that he did, The Motorcycle Diaries is a fascinating first-person account of travel’s capacity to broaden the mind. The young medic Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara sets out from his home in Buenos Aires with his friend Alberto Granado sharing a motorcycle ‘La Poderosa’ and in his pointed recollections, you can almost feel Che’s ideological shift. He sees poverty and pain and beauty in the poor communities they visit, and through this, we learn a lot about how Guevara became a key player in the Cuban Revolution. But it’s also a beautiful rumination about the paths we take in life and the importance of curiosity.

Publisher: Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island (1995) – Bill Bryson

You can’t really write a top travel literature list and omit Bill Bryson. He’s one of the finest travel writers still producing books. Notes from a Small Island is particularly intriguing because, while most of the books that make any top travel literature list tend to be written by Brits, this is a book about Britain, written by an American. And it’s a delightfully observed book at that, pinpointing the eccentricities and unusual aspects of the island nation that most Brits would never think twice about, but when seen through foreign eyes suddenly become absurd. Bryson is especially gifted at making even the most mundane things seem funny. His books neatly balance thorough research and scholarship with humour and keen observation, effectively amalgamating all of the key aspects of travel literature into one inimitable style.

Publisher: Black Swan, Buy at Amazon.com

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson (Photo: Wolf Gang via Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0)

On the Road (1957) – Jack Kerouac

Before modern travel literature’s more self-aware phase that started in the 1970s, we had what essentially kick-started the great 20 th -century American cultural upheaval: The Beat Movement. Kerouac was writing about sexual promiscuity, wanton drug use and giving the establishment the middle finger way before it was cool to do so. Well-educated and moving in New York’s literary circles, Kerouac’s thinly-veiled characters in On the Road (substituting Old Bull Lee for William S. Burroughs, Dean Moriarty for Neal Cassady, Carlo Marx for Allen Ginsberg, and Sal Paradise for himself) are painted into a quasi-fictional account of his cross-country jaunts in the late 1940s. The post-war world was much-changed; the white picket fence America with its Jim Crow segregation and uptight Bible-belt hypocrisy were no longer acceptable. Around the same time, J.D. Salinger was branding it phoney, while Kerouac was realising this in his own way, by embracing escapism and drugs. On the Road still resonates today; both the book and the Beats gave licence to a generation of youths to question the oppressive system that became all too obvious in the 60s.

On The Road by Jack Kerouac (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

The Road to Oxiana (1937) – Robert Byron

Much of the Afghanistan and Iran of Byron’s writing has disappeared, making the precision of his prose all the more valuable. The Road to Oxiana has all the classic elements of earlier travel narratives in it, scholarship, keen observation but also the kind of humour and casual presentation that would become far more popular in the writing styles common to the latter half of the 20 th century. Byron’s constant use of Marjoribanks to replace the name of the Persian ruler of the time was designed to evade censure or punishment in case his notebooks were confiscated and read. The humour of this rebelliousness is not lost when read today, even if some of his style may feel a little bit dated now. His architectural descriptions may be among some of the finest in all of travel literature.

The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Rome and a Villa (1952) – Eleanor Clark

Because the majority of travel writing is crafted around a voyage or quest of some sort, we expect the movement to transcend places, countries even. What Clark does exceptionally well in Rome and a Villa is offer an in-depth depiction of just one city: Rome. This book, although not particularly tied to or crafted around any one specific idea, offers a deeper understanding of The Eternal City based on Clark’s explorations, often on foot. Indeed, her scholarly treatment of the Italian capital brings the city’s rich, storied past to life in imaginative and illuminating ways that offer fresh insight on a place that we may easily think has already been well covered already. Which goes to show that places change with the times offering an opportunity for fresh perspectives. There’s nowhere that is dull or too well-known in travel writing if handled by the right scribe.

Publisher: Harper Perennial, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road (2007) – Colin Thubron

Colin Thubron’s fascination with worlds that are ostensibly closed off to westerners has often led him into places that many others wouldn’t think to go. He visited China before it had opened up to the world, and the same goes for Soviet Russia. In Shadow of the Silk Road Thubron exhibits why his books are perhaps the most masterfully crafted of all contemporary travel literature. His pacing and descriptive writing are exquisite, particularly in this book, in which he journeys from Xi’an to Antakya in Turkey following the old ways, through Central Asia, once known as the Silk Road. The worlds he uncovers and the people he meets are painstakingly woven into a rich text, much like a hand-woven Persian rug, that is one of the most evocative pieces of travel writing out there.

Publisher: Vintage, Buy at Amazon.com

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Travels with Myself and Another (1979) – Martha Gellhorn

Even if Martha Gellhorn was writing today, she would rightly be upheld as one of the great journalists, but given that she was doing it decades ago, often better than her counterparts in a male-dominated field, is even more remarkable. The ‘Another’ that accompanies Gellhorn through much of the book was her former husband Ernest Hemingway, but the book also includes memoir from Africa in which she voyages solo. The book is presented as a collection of essays, a format that has become increasingly common in travel writing and which effectively allows the book to focus on more than one topic. Gellhorn’s writing includes keen observation, lively wit and a really sharp political outlook.

Publisher: Eland Publishing Ltd., Buy at Amazon.com

The Valleys of the Assassins (1934) – Freya Stark

Stark was an incredible human being. Fluent in numerous languages, including Farsi, she travelled the world often alone at a time when even men undertaking such journeys were considered intrepid. Stark was particularly drawn to the Middle East and was able to recount the stories of the women there, living in devout Muslim communities, in a way no man would ever have been able to do. She also discovered regions that had not been explored by Westerners before, including the Valley of the Assassins, which forms the basis of this eponymous book, receiving the Royal Geographical Society’s prestigious Back Award in the process. She continued to write books well into her 90s (releasing work over six decades) and died in Italy at the age of 100.

Publisher: Modern Library Inc., Buy at Amazon.com

Wild by Cheryl Strayed (Photo: Paul Stafford for TravelMag.com)

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (2012) – Cheryl Strayed

Some may question this popular book’s inclusion on a list of the all-time greats, but it really has all the ingredients of a classic exploration of the human psyche. The physical duress that Strayed experienced on her hike of the Pacific Crest Trail (which runs from California’s border with Mexico to Washington’s border with Canada), and the gradual loss of her toenails as a result, is depicted with visceral precision. Her self-inflicted pain mirrors the mental health and dependency issues that plagued her before embarking on the feat, and in the process, we discover the restorative power of travel, of meeting new people and of forcing ourselves to step beyond our comfortably-positioned boundaries. Like any good travel literature, this book sheds light on why travel is so addictive, powerful and pertinent. Just like all the other books on this list, you’ll finish it wanting to plan your next trip.

Publisher: Atlantic Books, Buy at Amazon.com

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Travel literature

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• 2 Historical
• 3 19th century and later

Travel literature is a broad and popular genre of writing covering adventure and exploration, travel writing collections, travel-related memoirs, and travel-centric fiction. Travel writing often blends with essay writing, coming in the form of travel writing collections or as features in magazines. Styles range from journalistic, to the introspective, to funny, and to serious. Early examples appear in medieval China, ancient Greece, and in early Arabic literature.

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Historical [ edit ].

• Narrow Road to the Deep North ( Oku-no-hosomichi )- Verses and poems by 17th century haiku poet Basho Matsuo on his travel to the northeastern Japan.

19th century and later [ edit ]

Long distance travel became more accessible to people with the advent of rail, ocean-going steamships and later the automobile and aeroplanes.

See also [ edit ]

• Fiction tourism
• Travel writing

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Travel Literature | Travelogue | Definition, Examples, Books

What is Travel Literature?

Table of Contents

Travel Literature Definition

Travel literature is a kind of travel writing having some significance and literary values. An individual’s travel experience is called a travelogue. The literary travelogues exhibit coherent narratives. It has also aesthetic values.

History of Travel Literature

The study of travel writing become more mature in the late 1990s, encouraged by the currency of Foucauldian criticism and Edward Said’s landmark study Orientalism .

The first international travel writing conference on the topic “ Snapshots from Abroad ” was organized by Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota in 1997. The gathering of one hundred scholars from different countries led to the foundation of the “International Society for travel Writing”. (ISTW).

The first issue of studies in Travel Writing was published the same year edited by eminent scholar Tim Young. Annual scholarly conferences about travel writing, held in different countries and continents like USA, Europe and Asia. This led to unprecedented upswing in the number of published travel literature monographs and essay collections, as well as a proliferation of travel writing anthologies.

Travel writing is a literary genre that has, as its focus, accounts of real or imaginary places. This genre encompasses a number of styles that may range from the documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic, and from humorous to the serious. Travel writing is a long-established literary format. An early example is the writing of Pausanias, a celebrated author of 2nd century A.D., who produced his Description of Greece based on his own observations.

The more recent example can be cited is Che Guevara ‘s The Motorcycle Diaries . The genesis of travel literature is very common in Arabic literature . The travelogues of Ibn Jubayr (1145-1214) and Ibn Batutta ( The Rihila )(1304-1377), both these travellers, recorded their travels across the known world in detail.

The Travels of Marco Polo (II Milione) , describing Marco Polo’s travels through Asia between 1271 and 1295 is a classic of travel literature

Michault Taillevent , (1388-1462) a noted poet of the Duke of Burgundy, travelled through the Jura Mountains in 1430. The author of Petit Jehan de Saintre, climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Island in 1407 and gave his authentic writings.

Best Travel Literature Books

Travel literature often intersects with essay writing, as in V.S. Naipaul’s India: A Wounded Civilization , where a trip becomes the occasion for extended observation on a nation and people. This can be also traced in the writings of Rebecca West’s work on Yugoshlavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon . Sometimes a writer stays for an extended period, studies minutely everything with his own sensibility and writes about his journey examples of such writings include Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons , Deborah Tall’s The Island of the White Cow and Peter Mayle’s best selling A Year in Provence and its sequels Literary travel writing, also occurs when any author, famous in the field of literature, travels and writes about his or her own expedition.  Bruce Chatwin’s widely acclaimed  In Patagonia is also a good example of Travel Literature ,

Travel Literature Writers

Examples of such writers are Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Mary Wallstonecraft, Robert Louis Stevenson, Hillarire Belloc, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca-West and John Steinbeck, Gilles le Bourier, in his Livre de la description des pays gave the reason to write travel literature and says:

“Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing the World and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go, and travel, I have begun this little book.”

India : A Wounded Civilization as a Travel Literature

V.S. Naipaul, the noted novelist has written the memorable travelogue India : A Wounded Civilization from August 1975 to October 1976. Indian was reeling under the Emergency rule since June 25, 1975. Naipaul has strange fascination for this nation. He had visited earlier to India to search the truth of the mystic land which was narrated to him by his ancestors. His ancestors belonged to Gangestic plain in Uttar Pradesh, Varanasi. Naipaul belong to brahamin caste. They were taken to Caribbean Island by the English. After his visit of India, he witnessed the deep wound in the social and religious life. The soul of Indian Civilization was deeply wounded. The civilization which boasted of her glory, in fact, has nothing but emptiness and shallowness. Naipaul was deeply distressed to see this grim truth of India. This is one of the most accurate and authentic description on Indian life written by an expatriate Indian author. He has described every aspects of India and Indian life with sincerity and honesty. Louis Heren in The Time says about the travelogue:

“A devastating work, but proof that a novelist of Mr. Naipaul’s stature can often define problems quicker and more effectively than a team of economists and other experts from the World Bank.”

In this travelogue, Naipaul has described about different people and their social life. Their economic condition and the cultural life have been depicted. Naipaul visited the ruins of Vijayanagar, Bihar, Rajasthan, Bombay and Pune. He saw the political unrest of the country. The fast deteriorating civilization of India did not escape his sharp eyes. Naipaul was highly astonished to see the sharp decline in the intellectual make up of the people of India. India as a nation need to rectify her if she desires to come out of her serious wound. New Statesman the newspaper says:

“What he saw and heard – evoked so superbly and vividly in his book-only reinforced his conviction that India, wounded by a thousand years of foreign rule, has still not found an ideology of regeneration.”

Naipaul has depicted India with full honesty and sincerity. The overdose of hypocrisy shown by Indian people concerning their culture has been highlighted by Naipaul.

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Travel literature: what it is, how it arose, its characteristics and most important works

What is travel literature.

Travel books or travel literature comprises a type of texts that bring together aspects such as experiences, feelings, voices, scenarios, reflections, etc., about a journey that is made by the narrator. This type of literature can include works about conquests, explorations, adventures and other journeys that are part of this same category, and that can be real or fictitious facts that make allusions to known geographical spaces, for example.

In this sense, they are texts that originally respond to the need to give an account of unknown regions, explorations, etc., which is why those who initiated their development, according to the tracing of these texts, were often explorers and travelers who, with the passage of time, will shape one of the most important types of literature in this artistic field.

How does travel literature arise?

As for the birth of this literature, it is believed that the writing of these books is located in the fourteenth century with the emergence of the work Embassy of Tamorlán, which expresses the chronicle of a journey undertaken by envoys directly from King Henry III to meet Tamorlán, emperor of Asian origin, and ends around the fifteenth century.

In its beginnings, travel literature or travel books were used to communicate and express the discoveries, advances and descriptions of people who undertook journeys to unknown areas and detailed, under this type of text, what they found along the way. Thus, in principle, those who start with this category will be travelers and explorers, especially. The reasons that propitiated these journeys could easily vary, among them were the exploration of new lands, espionage work, etc.

It is considered that the first manifestations of this type of literature were in the hands of authors such as Bernal Díaz del Castillo and Far Bartolomé de las Casas, authors who wrote detailed texts under the format of the chronicle and who have special importance in terms of the content related to the conquest and arrival to the American continent.

However, the notion of travel literature will change significantly towards the 20th century. At this time this type of literature changes its tone, since most of its authors, writers and travelers, will travel not by order of superiors, but simply for the taste and particular interest of doing so. Thus, the horizons for this category are broadened, including the adventures of those who set out on new roads and describe everything they have seen in the texts.

Development of travel literature

The texts of this type of literature are mainly housed under the narrative format, often in the novel. This is because their content can be better structured in this type of structures, as it must follow aspects such as coherence in the story. One of the main characteristics of travel literature in terms of the development and creation of the works has to do with the fact that they may or may not be based on real events. Thus, the author may resort to fictitious or even speculative facts.

Unlike a detailed description of aspects and data about a trip, travel literature includes texts that are not a collection of events, but can be constituted as exploration logs and even a travel diary, which is why we will find experiences of the narrator, explorations, adventures that may or may not be starred by the narrator.

The dimensions that this type of texts have reached are especially due to the different contributions made by authors who have been interested in this type of texts, leaving in their wake tools that have been fundamental for creative continuity. This, even when conditions have undergone important transformations, since events such as technological advances, the invention of means of transportation and cultures have changed the form and given variety to styles. Despite this, they have remained under the magnifying glass of the author of travel literature.

Travel literature will take its final form, as we know it, after the Romanticism, when important changes are generated in relation to the objective of the tours and travels of the authors. At this moment, it is no longer only a process that throws in its writing detailed information from an investigation or with a commercial purpose, but it becomes an inspiring journey in which it begins to take other aspects and resources of literature to constitute, finally, travel literature in the notion of the present time.

Characteristics of travel literature

Now, in order to understand in depth what this type of literature consists of and under what ideas it lays its foundations of creation, it is necessary to review the most important distinguishing features in its development process. Among them, we find the following:

Writing motive

As we have seen, the central motive of this type of literature is the journey itself. When we speak of travel literature, we are talking about texts that make extensive journeys through the experiences of the narrator. In this sense, the journey constitutes the central axis of the plot.

Travel literature in novels

The main format chosen by this type of texts, in its most recent moments, is the novel. The structure of this narrative genre facilitates for the reader the incorporation not only of the central argument, as we saw in the previous point, but also the sum of descriptions that make the construction of images for the reader. These include aspects of his journey, such as the cultures he encounters, the societies, the people, the landscapes, etc.

Functions of travel literature

Another aspect that we should highlight about this category or literary modality is that it has the capacity to fulfill several functions, among them two mainly. On the one hand, we find that a travel book has a documentary function in terms of the undertaking of the journey and its portrayal in the work, and a literary function with the consolidation of a work itself.

Portrait of societies

As a way of obtaining information, following the documentary function, these books are excellent tools. This is due to the fact that in their descriptions, travel literature provides key data about the areas visited or traveled to, providing information such as location, landscapes, food, aspects of nature, religious beliefs, traditions and customs, among others.

Chronological narrative

Many of the texts in travel literature follow a chronological narrative, so that the story progresses and develops according to a specific time that is linear and thus makes it easier for the reader to follow the same journey. In this sense, the situations faced by the traveler or explorer must be narrated obeying the course of events.

About the protagonist

It is important to bear in mind that in this type of texts, generally the central role, the protagonist, is built under the figure of a hero who, in his journeys, faces different dangers and challenges that are put in his way, besides constituting the most important actions of the story.

Development scenarios

Being a type of literature that involves a physical displacement in its story, travel literature includes scenarios different from those that are part of the daily life not only of the character, in many cases, but also of the reader. Hence, it increases the level of expectation before the unknown, presenting the public with different scenarios and environments such as enchanted islands, deep forests, impenetrable jungles, among others.

Variety of formats

The travel story, as it is also known, has the ability to be constructed under different formats, despite the fact that its most recurrent genre has been the narrative and with it, the novel. That is why, especially in its initial stage and some authors later on, travel literature will be seen in formats such as letters and chronicles. The latter format represented his first mode of writing, where any trait of fantasy or fiction was absent.

Most important works and authors

Among the main works of this type of literature, we find titles such as: Embassy of Tamorlán, Book of Marco Polo, Por carreteras secundarias, Paraísos Oceánicos, by Aurora Bertrana, Viaje a la Alcarria, by Camilo José Cela, Lugares que no quiero compartir con nadie, by Elvira Lindo, Heridas del viento, by Virginia Mendoza, El camino más corto, by Manuel Leguineche, Vagabundo en África, by Javier Reverte, Donde la Vieja Castilla se acaba: Soria, by Avelino Hernández, Naufragios, by Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Los senderos del mar, by María Belmonte, Venecia, by Jan Morris, El pez escorpión by Nicolás Bouvier, Viajes con Charley by John Steinbeck, Viaje al Japón by Rudyard Kipling, Letters from Istanbul by Mary Wortley Montagu, among others.

And among the main authors who gave way to this type of text are figures such as: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Bernal Díaz del Castillo, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Rebecca West, Ryszard Kapuściński, Alexandra David-Néel, Peter Matthiessen, Alí Bey, Adolfo Rivadeneyra, Ana Briongos, Jordi Esteva, Juan Goytisolo, Paco Nadal, Javier Reverte, Gabi Martínez, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris, Javier Reverte, Manu Leguineche, Robert Byron, Colin Thubron, Norman Lewis, Mark Twain, among others.

To learn more about other types of texts, authors, literary movements and more, don’t forget that you can find this and more information in our Literature section.

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What is a Travelogue?

Travel writing is a genre that is becoming increasingly popular. It seems that each week a new travel book gets published and every day more writers are interested in writing one. Yet, as interest in travel writing grows, so too does the need to clarify the questions: What exactly is a travelogue? And how does it compare to a travel book?

What is a travelogue?

A travelogue is a truthful account of an individual’s experiences traveling, usually told in the past tense and in the first person.

The word travelogue supposedly comes from a combination of the two words  travel  and  monologue . In turn, the word  monologue  comes from the Greek words  monos  (alone) and  logos  (speech, word). A travelogue is then, in its most basic form, a spoken or written account of an individual’s experiences traveling, which usually appears in the past tense, in the first person, and with some verisimilitude.

Because a travelogue aims to be a true account of an individual’s experiences traveling, descriptions of what the traveler sees, hears, tastes, smells, and feels in the external world while traveling are essential components . 

Of course, thoughts, feelings, and reflections are important parts of our experience of travel. So, descriptions of a traveler’s inner world are not out-of-place in the travelogue.

Likewise, notes and observations on history, society, and culture are also common features of travelogues, as we certainly learn about the world when we travel.

If you want to write a better travel stories, check out our tips to write better travelogues .

What are the types of travelogue?

A travelogue can exist in the form of a book, a blog, a diary or journal, an article or essay, a podcast, a lecture, a narrated slide show, or in virtually every written or spoken form of creation. 

There are many examples of travelogues online in the form of “travel blogs.”

However, not all travel blogs are travelogues in the pure sense of the term because some of their authors are less concerned with giving personal accounts of their own experiences traveling than capturing internet search traffic by providing tips, advice, or practical information about travel.

For example, they claim to present the “best things to do” in a particular destination instead of “what I did” there. Though, some travel blogs do publish hybrid travelogues that also provide tips and advice in order to market their travel services.

Travelogue books

Mark Twain’s  The Innocents Abroad  is a good example of a travelogue in book form. While it was published as a book in the 19 th  century, it is perhaps best characterized as a travelogue by today’s standards and not as a modern travel book . The frontispiece of the first edition in 1869 explains why:

In  The Innocents Abroad , Twain gives us and “account of the steamship  Quaker City ’s pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land; with descriptions of countries, nations, incidents and adventures, as they appeared to the author.” It is a descriptive account of his travels and thoughts, sometimes funny and often bigoted. He tells us what he saw and what he felt while also offering historical and cultural remarks on the places he visited.

While it is well-written, I’m not sure the book has a story, a plot, a narrative arc, or a storyline that holds everything together. These are features seldom found in travelogues, R. K. Wilson reminds us in his 1973 study  The Literary Travelogue .

A destination isn’t a story. Neither is simply going from one place to another.

Instead,  The Innocents Abroad  is an account of Twain’s holiday, written as if were a letter to his mother half a world away. “Dear Mom,” we imagine the book starting.

Travelogues vs. travel books

As we have seen in the example above, a travelogue can exist in the form of a book. But this does not mean that it is the same thing as a  travel book as we understand it today. 

Indeed, terms like  travelogue  and  travel book  often get conflated. “Even [E.M.] Forster is uncertain what to call these things,” Paul Fussell wrote in his book  Abroad . “In 1941 he calls them  travelogues , in 1949  travel books .” Like Forster, Fussell conflates the terms.

In the last 100 years or so, we have seen the travel book evolve from the travelogue and mature into a more rarefied thing with its own set of stylistic and formal expectations. Carl Thompson calls this the  modern travel book , a concept he discusses in the early chapters of his academic study  Travel Writing . 

While it can appear in book form and evoke a day-to-day account like a logbook, a ship’s log, or a captain’s log, a travelogue does not necessarily have the formal dimensions and stylistic conceits of the  modern travel book .

A travelogue does not necessarily have the formal dimensions and stylistic conceits of the  modern travel book .

This is not to say that travelogues are not insightful or uninteresting. Quite the opposite. They are incredibly revealing and can expose a tremendous amount of information about the world, the writer, and the reader.

But the modern travel book is a different beast. Among other important distinctions, modern travel books and modern travelogues have stories , plots, and through-lines. A mission, quest, or journey isn’t a story in and of itself.

Perhaps making a distinction between a travelogue and the modern travel book is an elitist or academic move. But perhaps it is no more pompous to say this than it is to say that a modern novel has a specific form and style different from its earlier iterations.

Is the travel book a “sub-species of memoir,” as Fussell notes? Is travel writing even a genre? How do travelogues fit into the travel writing landscape?

Travel writing historians and scholars do not agree upon the definitions and boundaries of travel writing. The one thing they agree on is that there is no consensus on the definition. To that point, Thompson writes, “the boundaries of the travel writing genre are fuzzy, and there is little point in policing them too rigidly.”

P.S.: At the time of writing this, the Wikipedia article on The Innocents Abroad says that the book “presents itself as an ordinary travel book based on an actual voyage” (emphasis added). We’ll leave it at that.

Last Updated on 29 December 2020 by Travel Writing World

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Travel Writing World

With an emphasis on travel books and long-form travel literature, host Jeremy Bassetti talks with the world’s most inspiring travel writers about their work and about the business and craft of travel writing in this award-winning podcast and website. In addition to the podcast, the site also features travel writer profiles, book reviews, and articles.

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Travel book guidebook (free pdf download), types of travel writing, websites for travel writers, the 30 best travel books about spain, gifts for travel writers [2023], become a travel writer: the best books on....

Extremely helpful; informative and insightful. Has stimulated me to dig a little deeper into the sub-divisions within travel writing and gain a better understanding of where my own Mad Cow in Galicia memoir series sits within the genre. Thank you.

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Example sentences travel literature

The first two books — ornate in their style and wondrous in their vision — swiftly became classics of travel literature .

Judging from much contemporary travel literature , few expeditions are conceived without hope of self-discovery or self-improvement.

He also collected opera scores, poetry, drama and travel literature .

Scholars of travel literature have taught us to look at the published accounts of exploratory feats with more critical eyes.

Travel literature , memoir, autobiography, history, ethnography, with some fictionalized character portraits - yes.

Definition of 'literature' literature

Definition of 'travel' travel

COBUILD Collocations travel literature

Browse alphabetically travel literature.

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• travel narrative
• travel organization
• travel package
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Course info.

• Prof. Mary Fuller

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As taught in.

• International Literature
• Nonfiction Prose

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World literatures: travel writing, course description.

This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus’s Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the …

This semester, we will read writing about travel and place from Columbus’s Diario through the present. Travel writing has some special features that will shape both the content and the work for this subject: reflecting the point of view, narrative choices, and style of individuals, it also responds to the pressures of a real world only marginally under their control. Whether the traveler is a curious tourist, the leader of a national expedition, or a starving, half-naked survivor, the encounter with place shapes what travel writing can be. Accordingly, we will pay attention not only to narrative texts but to maps, objects, archives, and facts of various kinds.

Our materials are organized around three regions: North America, Africa and the Atlantic world, the Arctic and Antarctic. The historical scope of these readings will allow us to know something not only about the experiences and writing strategies of individual travelers, but about the progressive integration of these regions into global economic, political, and knowledge systems. Whether we are looking at the production of an Inuit film for global audiences, or the mapping of a route across the North American continent by water, these materials do more than simply record or narrate experiences and territories: they also participate in shaping the world and what it means to us.

Authors will include Olaudah Equiano, Caryl Philips, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Joseph Conrad, Jamaica Kincaid, William Least Heat Moon, Louise Erdrich, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca.

Expeditions will include those of Lewis and Clark (North America), Henry Morton Stanley (Africa), Ernest Shackleton and Robert F. Scott (Antarctica).

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A (Short) History Of Travel Writing

Posted on Last updated: February 5, 2023

In this short history of travel writing, we will look at the different types of reporting about travel throughout the ages.

If you’re looking for a book about travel in a bookshop or library, you better take the rest of the day, well perhaps even better the week… month, or even rest of the year off! There are just so many!

The amount of writers reporting about the different landscapes and food they tasted in foreign destinations, books with history lessons about certain places and personal narratives about a person’s excitement and struggles of navigating through unknown territories and meeting foreign people are endless.

TYPES OF TRAVEL WRITING

Early travel literature in asia, travel writing during classic and medieval times, who was the first travel writer, discovering new worlds, why we like to write and read about travelling, famous travel writing, studying travel literature, modern day travel writing, add to your vision board, travel without leaving home, which book to read, want to be a travel blogger, our favourite travel journals, our favourite travel notebook covers, travel journals for kids, discover unique travel gear & gifts, travel writing history.

When we’re talking about travel writing, there are a couple of distinctions to be made. There are:

• travelogues (journal/itinerary style, actual reports about someone’s trip)
• travel stories  (a realistic narration about a journey, meant for a wider audience and usually with a certain literary value to it)
• and travel guides (publication with practical information and tips/advice about a certain destination, meant for people that want to visit that place).

With old stories, it’s hard to distinguish between a travel story or a travelogue. This is because we don’t know the accuracy of the information and motif of the story. Most of the time, it is also not known who commissioned the story in the first place.

That said, in all travel writing, the focus lies on accounts of real or imaginary places. It may range from documentary to the evocative, from literary to journalistic and from humorous to serious.

You can find travel writing in books, magazines and of nowadays also online. What different types of travel writing are your favourite to read?

You don’t always need to be physically on the road to enjoy the beauty of destinations from all around the world!

From vintage travel posters to beautifully displayed souvenirs and home decor items inspired by your favourite places and from travel journals and crafts to exploring world recipes, music and dance.

With our creative articles you’ll get some fresh ideas on how to bring the world closer to the comforts of your own home.

In China , travel literature became popular during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Under the name of ‘ Youji Wenxue ‘ (‘ Travel Record Literature ‘), authors such as Fan Chengda and Xu Xiake incorporated geographical and topographical information into their writing.

Poet and statesman Su Shi wrote ‘ Record Of Stone Bell Mountain ‘ and made a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose.

In Japan , there are also many personal reports from travellers sharing their experiences and interesting encounters.

Examples include the ‘ Sjōrai Moluroku ‘ (804) by author Kūkai and the ‘ Tosa Nikki ‘ (‘ Tosa Diary’ ) by Ki no Tsurayuki (early 10th century), which was found revolutionary because it featured a female narrator.

Haiku poet Matsuo Bashō wrote the story ‘ Oku no Hosomitsji ‘ (‘ The narrow road to the Deep North’ ) in the second half of the 17th century. The work included the journey, places visited and the author’s personal experience.

Throughout the history of travel writing, you might not categorize some of the historical tales as travel stories. But how about the famous travelogue ‘ Odysseia ‘ (‘ Odysey ‘) from 8B.C. by Homer? This poem recounted Greek hero Odysseus’ long journey home after the fall of Troy.

The Latin work ‘ Commentarii dé bello Gallico ‘ by Julius Caesar reported his journey during the Gallic War.

Greek writer Xenophone wrote ‘Anabasis’ around 431-355 BC. It was about the expedition of a Persian prince against his brother, King Artaxerxes II and the Greek troops travels through Asia back home to Greece. In Medieval works, it showed that people had very little knowledge about the world around them.

Stories were usually a colourful mix of facts and impossible events. They were mostly quests (for the Holy Grail or for personal development) or texts with a mainly Christian/spiritual focus. You can’t really call them travel stories, as they didn’t tell much about the actual environment.

It’s hard to say with 100% accuracy, but often the Greek author Herodotus is consider the first real ‘travel writer’. He travelled all over the eastern Mediterranean to research his monumental  Histories , written between 450 and 420 BC.

The Histories serves as a record of the ancient traditions, politics, geography, and clashes of various cultures that were known in Greece, Western Asia and Northern Africa at that time.

After the crusades, new stories and information reached the people. They started to realize that there was a whole other world outside their own. The history of travel literature evolved even more at this point.

There came a shift in stories type, as there was much curiosity about explorations and voyages to unknown destinations.

Travel was a necessity at those times. That is why most travel stories were purely intended to inform about the different nature and culture of inhabitants they met. And the best ways in which to approach them. There were also a lot of military explorations that informed more about strategic issues.

A well-known travel writer in those times was Marco Polo from Italy , who wrote (or let someone else write) about a Venetian traveller on his way to China and the Mongol Empire in the work ‘ Il milione ‘ (‘ The million ‘, 1298). This work is seen as a truthful report of things, complemented with (not always correct) information he collected through hearsay.

In 1336, someone did a bit more than just jotting down facts about his destination. Italian poet and humanist Petrarch described his experiences about climbing mount Ventoux and –more importantly- his satisfaction about reaching the top. He also wrote about his travel companions and even related his experience to his own moral development in life, as were it a pilgrimage.

More and more people after Petrarch found a new interest in writing about their travels in a more personal way.

World traveller Ibn Battuta from Morocco wrote in 1355 the work ‘ Rihla ‘ (‘ The Journey ‘), with an original title that translates as: ‘ A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling ‘.

Halfway through the 15 th century, Historicus Gilles le Bouvier from France wrote in a book his opinion about why people should travel and write about it: ‘ Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take please, as I have done in times past, in seeing the world and things therein, and also because many wish to know without going there, and others wish to see, go and travel, I have begun this little book .’

The Travel Tester loves to review books that teach you something about yourself or the world around us.

From travel guides and stories to books about business and self-development and from cultural stories to cook books from kitchens around the world… if it looks interesting to us, we’ll test it!

No matter where you’re going, with our reviews you’ll know exactly what to read next!

Continuing this history of travel writing through ages, in the 18 th century travel writing was known under the name ‘ Book of Travels ‘. Usually these were maritime journals – and the people devoured them. British James Cook’s diaries (1784) reached the status of a modern day international best-seller. Along with true stories, imaginary travel stories started to appear.

Many of them were actually based on factual journeys. You might have heard of Joseph Conrad’s ‘ Heart of Darkeness ‘, Daniel Defoe’s ‘ Robins on   Crusoe’ , Jonathan Swift’s  ‘Gulliver’s   Travels’ or Jules Vernes, ‘The journey around the world in 80 days’ .

Charles Darwin wrote his famous account of the journey of the HMS Beagle in the 19 th century. It was a work at the intersection of science, natural history and travel. Other famous authors from his time, that also wrote travel stories where: Hans Christian Andersen, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.

There have been many studies about travel writing and travel literature.

They include themes such as: interwar travel writing as escapism, the primitivist presentation of foreign cultures, the psychological correlatives of travel, the role of gender in travel and travel writing, explorations of the political functions of travel, studies about the function of language in travel and travel writing, cultural diversity, globalization and migration.

The first international travel writing conference was titled ‘ Snapshots from Abroad ‘ and was organized by Donald Ross at the University of Minnesota in the USA 1997. It attracted many scholars and led to the foundation of the ‘ International Society for Travel Writing ‘.

Travel writing in current times is quite a broad theme. From journal-type stories to literary works in which style and structure are more important.

Some of the most popular travel writers from the 20 th and 21 st century are (amongst others): Bill Bryson , Paul Theroux, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Stanley Stewart, Kira Salak, Douglas Adams, Anthony Sattin, Ryszard Kapuscinski, Bruce Chatwin and Rory MacLean.

These days, we all know the travel blog as another form of travel writing.

The first online travel blog was posted by Jeff Greenwald on the ‘ Global Network Navigator ‘ in 1993. He described his journey around the world and later turned the pieces into a book.

TIP! Read this funny travel blog of how things went south for me once at Schiphol Airport (but all was ok in the end)…

There is a lot that goes into running a profitable blog and there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes than you might not realize at first.

I’ve been blogging since 2006 and have a ton of tips to share! From brainstorming ideas to creating content all year round and from posting on social media to maintaining your website, tracking what’s working, networking at events and eventually working with brands…

As you can see, travel and reporting about our travels has been a source of inspiration for a long time now. Whether it was military officers, missionaries, the early explorers, scientists, pilgrims, migrants or people simply going on a holiday, we love telling others about our adventures!

I hope you enjoyed this short history of travel writing. Do you have an (online) travel journal? Feel free to share it in the comment section. And don’t forget to share this article if you liked it!

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MORE ABOUT TRAVEL JOURNALLING

• How to Make a Travel Journal ? Tips and Supplies
• How to Write a Travel Journal ? Best Writing Tips
• 65+ Travel Journal Prompts to inspire you
• 10+ Travel Bullet Journal Ideas you’ll love
• Best Bullet Journal Tips
• These Travel Journal Covers will amaze you
• Explorers’ Sketchbooks Review
• A Short History of Travel Writing
• 15 Signs you are born for Travel Writing
• Our Okinawa (Japan) Project Life Album
• Must-Have Travel Scrapbooking Supplies

In The Travel Tester shop, you will find our favourite travel products and original gift ideas.

Whether you’re looking for the best travel gear, gadgets, electronics, packing solutions, clothing, shoes, travel books, health- or beauty products… we’ve made a personal selection for you!

We’ve also included our favourite tech items used to create this blog, as well as material that can help you in your self-development, such as interesting books and courses.

Monday 5th of March 2018

A great synopsis of the fundamentals of travel writing. From the very start one can easily discover a cultural binding through the need of storytelling and sharing. Thank you guys!

Nienke Krook

Friday 6th of April 2018

Glad you liked it Antonios!

HISTORY CHALLENGE: HISTORIC TRAVELLERS | Time Travelling With Kids

Monday 28th of November 2016

[…] For an overview of the history of travel writing, visit: https://thetraveltester.com/a-short-history-of-travel-writing/ […]

Friday 20th of February 2015

Your article is absolutely fascinating Nineke. I came across it whilst researchign a talk I'm giving on the 'Pleasure of Travel Writing' and will certainly recommend it to the audience :-)

Wednesday 25th of February 2015

Thanks so much Zoë! Would have loved to see your talk, will it be online somewhere? Thanks for mentioning me!

LifeInCamelot

Wednesday 6th of February 2013

I enjoyed reading this and am glad I have found you. Welcome to Australia and I look forward to reading more of your stories. I have started my own travel blog - it includes some travelogues (from the past) and some travel stories. I enjoy using humour so love reading other people's sites that are humourous. I also love the feeling of nostalgia your blog has, along with the history of your grandfather.

My blog address is - www.lifeincamelot.wordpress.com

thetraveltester

Hi (sorry couldn't find your name anywhere?), Thanks for your nice comment. I've just left Australia after 2 years and loved living there. Now it's adjusting to (coldcold) Europe :) I am looking forward to reading your blog, thanks for the tip!

Inside the Literary Travel Boom

Book butlers! Curated libraries! Custom cruises! Literary-themed vacations are the hot new trend in tourism.

In January, when packing my bags for a “reading retreat” in the Dominican Republic, I agonized about which books to bring. A few days later, bellied up to the beachside bar at the all-inclusive Dreams Macao Beach Punta Cana resort (where, in place of barstools, swings are suspended from the thatched ceiling), I sipped a mojito, cracked open James Salter’s Light Years, a novel I reread annually, and knew that I’d chosen well.

But if I’d had any regrets, summoning a new paperback would’ve been as easy as ringing for a book butler. I was down in the DR to experience Pages in Paradise, a collaboration between the publisher Penguin Random House, Belletrist Book Club (the brainchild of actress Emma Roberts), and Apple Vacations (no relation to the iPhone maker). For readers who like to beach, the retreat left no page unturned. The programming kicked off even before check-in: Ahead of arrival, guests could log in to the resort’s app to reserve beach reads from an on-site library curated by Belletrist. Housed in the airy hotel lobby, the collection included buzzy contemporary fiction by the likes of Zadie Smith and Curtis Sittenfeld. Guests could also order books via room service (or personal butler) anytime or select one from the chic library carts located at the adults-only pool. The property’s various bars featured the “Pages Pour,” a specialty cocktail themed to the program’s inaugural book-of-the-month selection, Jenny Xie’s debut novel, Holding Pattern . They called the drink a gin-fashioned—a fruit-forward riff on the old-fashioned, zippy with pineapple-cinnamon syrup.

Exotic as this tropical gathering of book lovers might have been, it’s just one example of a fast-growing business trend: literary-themed travel. We have the pandemic to thank. Reading surged in the early days of Covid, and the habit stuck as lockdowns eased: The biggest two years on record for print book sales in the U.S. were 2021 and 2022. Hotels and tourism companies, eager to lure back travelers, seized on the surge and began featuring books in their marketing. What began as a travel perk has become a full-blown movement to cater to readers with an explosion of new programming, from big-ticket experiences promising author access to solitary retreats. I know, I know—planning a trip around your reading list may never replace your annual golf weekend, but when else will you get the time to actually enjoy that stack on your nightstand? And if it all sounds like giving yourself homework, don’t worry—there definitely won’t be a quiz, and did I mention the drinks?

As a professional book recommender, the question I’m asked most often is “What book should I bring on my vacation?” ​But now there’s a new question to consider: What kind of literary vacation should I plan?

Not every reader is content to lie by the pool and read for days on end. Some are looking for a more kinetic experience—one that lets them interact with fellow readers, and even their favorite writers. Enter the “ Gone Girl cruise.” In fall 2022, author Gillian Flynn set sail down the Danube with some of her biggest (and most well-heeled) fans as part of Avalon Waterways’ Storyteller Series, cruises that offer literary travelers a chance to voyage in close quarters with authors and other storytellers. When Flynn tweeted about the cruise, it quickly became a viral sensation. On-board accounts detailed a true-crime extravaganza, with guests returning to their rooms each night to discover blood-spattered notes, themed to Flynn’s novels, on their pillows. Sure, it’s a little dorky—but we’re all fans of something, and if crime novels are your thing, what could be better?

For readers who can’t splash out for getaways abroad, there are literary destinations closer to home, too. In the artsy hamlet of New Hope, Pennsylvania, the historic luxury hotel River House at Odette’s offers Riverside Reading (in partnership with Bedside Reading), a program that pairs complimentary access to a curated library (via digital app or hard copies throughout the hotel) with intimate author experiences. With bookshelves stationed on each floor and authors rolling through seasonally, guests can dip in and out of the programming as they please.

When I visited River House deep in the grips of a harsh Pennsylvania winter, I discovered a reader’s paradise: My room boasted a fireplace, a private balcony, and serene views of the rushing Delaware River. After turndown service, I found a keepsake leather bookmark on my pillow. That evening, a few dozen guests gathered for a talkback with the novelist Jean Hanff Korelitz. In a ballroom festooned with red carnations (a nod to the cover of her latest book, The Latecomers ), Korelitz fielded rapid-fire questions about her inspiration, her writing process, and her hit novel The Plot . After the formal conversation concluded, starstruck guests crowded around her at the bar. “When people come up to you and say, ‘I loved your book,’ that really means something to writers,” Korelitz told me. As the owner of BookTheWriter, a service connecting authors and readers through pop-up book clubs hosted in New York City apartments, Korelitz knows a thing or two about making connections. In the recent boom of literary travel experiences, she sees a broader post-pandemic trend of readers craving the chance to get up close and personal with their favorite writers. “The ways of access to authors have multiplied exponentially,” she said. “I find it to be very inspiring.”

For an early-career author like Xie, who was at Pages in Paradise, seeing her novel highlighted was both exciting and transformative. That’s the thing about literary travel—it allows us to transcend our ordinary lives in more ways than one. “There’s a certain sense that we don’t have the space to read unless we’re traveling or living outside of our day-to-day,” said Xie. “A book takes you outside of your physical environment and your lived experience. Travel does that, too, so they join together in this really beautiful way to truly transport you.” That’s a journey worth taking.

HOW TO PLAN YOUR OWN LITERARY VACATION

Ready to take off on a bookish getaway? Literary travel isn’t “one size fits all,” so whatever type of reader you are, we’ve got a prescription for it. Choose your own adventure below.

For the fan

The Gone Girl cruise is over, but Avalon Waterways isn’t slowing down anytime soon: Its upcoming slate of Storyteller Cruises includes actor Graham McTavish (sailing down the Rhine River) and Outlander phenom Diana Gabaldon (voyaging down the Danube).

For the R&R chaser

Looking for a more relaxed experience? At the Reeds at Shelter Haven, an upscale resort on the Jersey shore, guests can participate in Reeds’ Reads, a seasonal book club featuring guided discussions, with authors sometimes joining via Zoom for Q&A sessions.

For the aspiring writer

Chances are, your favorite author is side-hustling by leading retreats in pastoral Europe. To get in on the action, pay close attention to their social-media feeds, or search for guided trips through an experiential-tourism outlet like TrovaTrip.

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The Meaning and Literary Origins of the Phrase ‘To Have an Albatross Around Your Neck’

‘Having an albatross around your neck’ means “facing an inescapable burden.” As for where the phrase originated, you can thank classic literature.

By Michele Debczak | Apr 19, 2024, 9:23 AM EDT

The English language is filled with animal-inspired idioms, from horseplay to monkey business . One of the more bizarre examples of this is the phrase to have an albatross around your neck . If you’ve ever used this expression to describe an unwanted burden , you were quoting poetry—possibly without realizing it.

This is one of the rare idioms whose origins can be traced back to the source. If you studied the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in English class, you may already be familiar with the phrase. In the late 18th-century literary work, a sailor recalls shooting a harmless albatross. The seabirds are considered lucky in maritime folklore, so the act triggers misfortune for the whole crew. As punishment , the sailor is forced to wear the animal's carcass around his neck. You can read the famous passage below.

“Ah! well a-day! What evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung.”

Today, the phrase have an albatross around your neck is used to characterize an unpleasant duty or circumstance that’s impossible to avoid. It can refer to something moderately annoying, like an old piece of furniture you can’t get rid of, or something as consequential as bad luck at sea.

Next time you call something “an albatross around your neck,” you can feel a little smarter knowing you’re quoting classic literature . Here are other examples of poetry you may use in everyday conversation without knowing it.

Read More Articles About Phrase Origins:

A version of this story ran in 2021; it has been updated for 2024.

• HISTORY & CULTURE

Meet the original members of the tortured poets department

From William Wordsworth to Emily Dickinson, Taylor Swift’s new album draws from a long legacy of Romantic-era literature.

“ I laughed in your face and said ‘You’re not Dylan Thomas, I’m not Patti Smith .’”

In a few words, Taylor Swift makes it clear who she thinks holds a membership to the tortured poets department. But, they—just like Swift—are following a long line of Romantics who depicted the realities of their time.  

Romanticism, in truth, is not as “romantic” as one might initially think. Writers employed the grotesque—distorted and fantastic descriptions of their realities—to describe the world that experienced Napoleon’s rise and fall, the abolition of the slave trade, and the growth of industrialization.

From the well-known, such as William Wordsworth and John Keats , to the lesser known, like Charlotte Smith and Thomas Hood , these writers and their contemporaries helped craft the “tortured” poet mold.  

Who were the Romantics?

The Romantic movement, which emerged in the late 18th century and persisted throughout the 19th century, is the foundational backdrop for the tortured poet archetype. In his early 19th-century essay, Preface to Lyrical Ballads , Wordsworth wrote, “all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.”  

Romantic writers often rebelled against the rationalism and order of the Enlightenment period that preceded it, opting to exaggerate and contradict reality instead. They celebrated spontaneity, intuition, and the sublime, and their works often explored themes of love, nature, the supernatural, and the human experience.

( This single working mom was Europe’s first professional woman writer .)

Other luminaries, such as African American poet Phillis Wheatley , used her poetry to resonate with themes of freedom and spirituality amid the stark realities of slavery in the late 18th century. Abolitionist Olaudah Equiano embedded poetic passages within his autobiographical narratives, shedding light on the plight of enslaved individuals and fervently advocating for their emancipation.  

Their voices, along with Juan Francisco Manzano , a Cuban poet whose words called for liberation amidst colonial oppression, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz , a Mexican nun whose poetic exploration of love and intellect defied societal norms, expanded the horizons of the Romantic movement.

On the other hand, the Dark Romanticism subgenre, prevalent in German and American Romanticism, employed gloomy, tragic language to explore the relationship between the divine and humanity. The shift to darkness (or at least a more explicit representation of it) in Romanticism was a response to the growth of Transcendentalism and its focus on the goodness, unity, and superiority of man. It’s best seen in Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s “ The Birthmark ,” which criticizes the pursuit of perfection.  

At the same time, German writers developed a genre of writing called Schwarze Romantik , a Gothic take on the Middle Ages complete with monsters and ghosts, which can be seen in “ Tamerlane ,” a work by American writer Edgar Allan Poe that delves into ambition and mortality in a medieval setting.  

A new generation of tortured poets

As the 19th century progressed, writers continued to grapple with existential and societal concerns, delving into themes of death, imperialism, and advancing technology. Figures like Christina Rossetti and Rudyard Kipling reflected Victorian anxieties through works such as “ One Sea-Side Grave ”   and “ The Female of the Species , ” using sensory language to evoke profound emotion.

( These Japanese cities may inspire your next haiku .)

The 20th century ushered in a new era of poetic expression, marked by profound shifts in global politics and culture. Poets of the “Lost Generation,” including Gertrude Stein and T.S. Eliot , critiqued the excesses of capitalism and the devastation wrought by World War I with unconventional and fragmented verse, while Dylan Thomas ’ 1947 poem “ Do not go gentle into that good night ” served as a poignant plea for resilience in the face of mortality.

As a new generation of tortured poets emerge amidst the tumultuous currents of the 21st century, they carry the legacy of their predecessors while forging their path forward. Protest movements of the 1960s, including the Vietnam War and Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements, further catalyzed poetry’s evolution, with artists blurring the lines between poetry and music as a form of protest.  

Swift nods to this aspect by mentioning Patti Smith , a poet-turned-singer who helped pioneer the punk scene during the 1970s. Smith’s influence underscores the ongoing relevance of the tortured poets tradition, demonstrating its ability to inspire and influence across diverse artistic mediums and generations.

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World Book Day 2024: origin, meaning and why it is celebrated on April 23

R eading books brings with it numerous benefits giving people the opportunity to explore new worlds and meet new people both real and imagined. It expands our knowledge and understanding of the world around us and those far away.

To celebrate the wonderment of books and those that make them come to life, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) established 23 April as World Book and Copyright Day in 1995. However, it got its start long before that in Spain.

The meaning of World Book and Copyright Day

Fundamentally, it is a celebration of the enjoyment of books, reading and storytelling. World Book and Copyright Day is a recognition of power of books to cross space, time and generations, uniting cultures and linking the present with the future and the past.

Literature is a powerful and effective tool to transmit information and knowledge worldwide, promoting culture, education and science. The World Book and Copyright Day is a time for nations to share the message that books can help address challenges which societies around the world and as whole we currently face. Through understanding the economic and political realities that we’re presented with, it is possible to combat inequalities and misinformation.

READ ALSO: The colleges and universities that have set up a Gaza Solidarity Encampment

The origin of World Book and Copyright Day

Setting aside a day to celebrate books traces its beginnings to Spanish writer Vicente Clavel Andrés. In 1922 he proposed the idea as a way to honor fellow countryman author Miguel de Cervantes. Four years later the first celebration took place on 7 October, Cervantes’ birthday, but was moved to 23 April, the date of his death, in 1930.

In 1995, the UNESCO General Conference decided to pay homage to authors and books world-wide as a way of encouraging everyone to access books. Choosing 23 April seemed a logical choice, besides being the date of Cervante’s death, it also happens to be the date William Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega died, among other prominent authors. Additionally, several distinguished authors were born on 23 April making it a symbolic date in the world of literature.

READ ALSO: Which countries have the highest carbon footprint?

The UNESCO World Book Capital

Annually since 2001, one city around the world is chosen to be the UNESCO World Book Capital for a year. The selected city is tasked with carrying out activities over its year-long designation to encourage “a culture of reading and diffusing its values in all ages and population groups in and out of the national borders.”

The initiative was put forward by Spain in 2001, and Madrid was designated the first capital, followed by Alexandria and then New Delhi.

Following those designations cities are chosen each year by the Director-General of UNESCO in consultation with an advisory committee made up of representatives from international organizations representing authors, libraries and publishers.

Watch CBS News

What is cloud seeding and did it play any role in the Dubai floods?

By Li Cohen , Tracy J. Wholf

Updated on: April 18, 2024 / 8:46 PM EDT / CBS News

Stranded airline passengers and a cat submerged in floodwaters clinging to a car door handle became notable moments this week in Dubai as the normally arid city was inundated with historic levels of rain. Claims have gone viral that the deluge was brought on by cloud seeding, a technique that aims to increase precipitation, that is heavily utilized in the United Arab Emirates. 

But is it really to blame? 

Daniel Swain , a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that getting to the bottom of the "record-shattering extreme rainfall" requires breaking down the science behind the event and the technique. 

"There's currently a disconnect in the online discourse between the kind of human activities that likely did affect it (greenhouse warming) versus those which have actually been the focus of the online conversation thus far (cloud seeding), and what this means for how we collectively understand our ability to actively affect the weather on different spatial and temporal scales," he said in an emailed statement. 

What is cloud seeding? 

Many have questioned since the downpour in Dubai whether cloud seeding was to blame. But what is cloud seeding and how does it work exactly?

Cloud seeding is a technique used to improve precipitation. According to the Desert Research Institute, scientists do this by putting tiny particles called nuclei into the atmosphere that attach to clouds.

"These nuclei provide a base for snowflakes to form. After cloud seeding takes place, the newly formed snowflakes quickly grow and fall from the clouds back to the surface of the Earth, increasing snowpack and streamflow," the institute says. 

In the Middle East, instead of precipitation in the form of snow, its cloud seeding program generates increased rain. 

Scientists typically go about cloud seeding in two ways – using either generators on the ground or distributing the nuclei via aircraft. 

What caused the rain in Dubai? 

But was the rain in Dubai from cloud seeding? 

"Did cloud seeding play a role? Likely no," Swain said. "But how about climate change? Likely yes!" 

The world is continuing to see month after month of record-breaking heat and 2023 was the hottest year globally ever recorded. Scientists have found that warmer temperatures increase evaporation, resulting in more frequent and intense storms, such as the one that occurred in Dubai. Those conditions also fuel other extreme weather events, including droughts , putting opposing forces at intense odds that will likely strain communities without adequate adaptation. 

Andrew Kruczkiewicz, senior researcher at Columbia Climate School, told CBS News he doesn't believe there's any current evidence at this time that cloud seeding pushed the downpour over the edge. 

"This event was forecast fairly well days in advance and I think it's unlikely that a cloud seeding operation would move forward given the well-forecast intense rainfall," he said.

The nation's  National Emergency Crisis and Management Authority issued weather warnings on Monday before the storm's arrival, urging people to comply with local instructions from authorities and asking them to stay at home and only leave in the case of an emergency. 

Meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave the Associated Press a more definitive answer: "It's most certainly not cloud seeding." 

"If that occurred with cloud seeding , they'd have water all the time," he said. "...when it comes to controlling individual rain storms, we are not anywhere close to that. And if we were capable of doing that, I think we would be capable of solving many more difficult problems than creating a rain shower over Dubai ."

The deluge, he said, "speaks more to questions around what are the resilience measures that are integrated into the urban planning standard operating procedures." 

"Almost everywhere on Earth there is a risk of flash flooding," he said. "Yet, since it's not the most frequent type of extreme event, sometimes it's lower on the priority list when decisions need to be made around infrastructure or resilience, or just urban development more broadly."  

How significant was the flooding in Dubai?  

More than 5.59 inches of rain fell over Dubai within 24 hours. While a half-foot of rain may not seem like much numerically, that's more than what the city sees in an average year, and other parts of the UAE saw even higher levels. 

It was a "historic weather event," the state-run WAM news agency said, adding that it was beyond "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949." 

Dubai is normally dry and with a downpour like this being so unprecedented, the city's infrastructure was not prepared. The drainage systems were overwhelmed and Dubai International Airport, one of the busiest in the world, had to temporarily halt operations. One plane passenger told Reuters many people were waiting more than 12 hours to be able to resume travel. Footage from the airport shows planes taxiing in eerie floodwaters. 

"Over a year's worth of rainfall was experienced in just a few hours," Kruczkiewicz told CBS News. "And why that's important to to understand is that when you see this amount of rainfall in semi-arid arid area, the soil isn't designed to filter the water as fast as in other areas. ... You don't need that much water falling or rainfall falling in a short period of time to cause major issues." 

Is cloud seeding effective? 

According to the Desert Research Institute, how effective cloud seeding is depends on the specific project in which it's being used. Citing several studies, the institute said it's helped increase overall snowpack in some areas by at least 10% per year. Another study found that a five-year project in New South Wales, Australia resulted in a 14% snowfall increase.  

The UAE's National Center of Meteorology launched the Research Program for Rain Enhancement Science to advance the technology, saying that for dryer regions across the world, cloud seeding "could offer a viable, cost-effective supplement to existing water supplies." Many regions even beyond the Middle East have been suffering from water scarcity issues, including Colombia , Mexico and Hawaii . 

• Science of Weather
• United Arab Emirates
• Climate Change
• Severe Weather

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

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