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

'… this edited collection offers an accessible treatment of British and Continental travel writing. All the essays are written in straightforward prose supported by rich footnotes.' C. L. Bandish, Choice
'… an admirable volume that combines rock solid reliability with the imaginative flair needed to engage a genre so elusive, and yet so historically pedigreed, as travel writing … splendid collective project, a joy and education to read …' David Wallace, Journal of British Studies

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