An increasingly popular genre, addressing issues of space, language, colonialism, globalization and politics, travel writing offers the reader a movement between the familiar and the unknown. In this volume, Carl Thompson: introduces the genre, outlining competing definitions and key debates provides a broad historical survey from the medieval period to the present day considers contemporary issues of tourism, migration and displacement looks both at canonical and more marginal works in women¿s writing, colonial and postcolonial writing examines the place of travel writing in the construction of ¿pioneering¿ narratives of America. Concise and practical, Travel Writing is the ideal introduction for those new to the subject, as well as a crucial overview of the terminology, history and debates within the field.

Carl Thompson is Senior Lecturer in English at Nottingham Trent University.

Introduction 1. Defining the Genre Exclusive and Inclusive Definitions of Travel Writing Traveller's Tales: Fact and Fiction in Travel Writing The Cultural and Intellectual Status of Travel Writing 2. Travel Writing through the Ages: An Overview The Ancient World Medieval Travellers and Travel Writing Early Modern Travel Writing The Long Eighteenth Century, 1660-1837 The Victorian and Edwardian Periods, 1837-1914 Travel Writing from 1914 to the Present 3. Reporting the World Discoveries and Wonders: Some Perennial Problems in Travel Writing Shifting Protocols of Authentication and Plausibility Authority and Factuality in the Modern Travel Book 4. Revealing the Self Grand Tourists, Pilgrims and Questing Knights: Self-Fashioning in Addison's Remarks on Italy (1705) and Ralegh's Discoverie of Guiana (1596) Writing the Self: Travel Writing's Inward Turn The Imperious 'I' 5. Representing the Other Strategies of Othering I: Travel Writing and Colonial Discourse Strategies of Othering II: Travel Writing in a Post/Neo-Colonial Era 6. Questions of Gender and Sexuality Masculinity, Travel and Travel Writing Women's Travel Writing in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Performing Femininity on the Page Women Travellers and Colonialism Women's Travel Writing Today