Keywords for Travel Writing Studies draws on the notion of the ‘keyword’ as initially elaborated by Raymond Williams in his seminal 1976 text Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society to present 100 concepts central to the study of travel writing as a literary form. Each entry in the volume is around 1,000 words, the style more essayistic than encyclopaedic, with contributors reflecting on their chosen keyword from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The emphasis on travelogues and other cultural representations of mobility drawn from a range of national and linguistic traditions ensures that the volume has a comparative dimension; the aim is to give an overview of each term in its historical and theoretical complexity, providing readers with a clear sense of how the selected words are essential to a critical understanding of travel writing. Each entry is complemented by an annotated bibliography of five essential items suggesting further reading.

Charles Forsdick is the James Barrow Professor of French at the University of Liverpool, UK, and AHRC Theme Leadership Fellow for ‘Translating Cultures’. He has published widely on travel writing, colonial history, postcolonial literature and the cultures of slavery.

Zoë Kinsley is senior lecturer in English literature at Liverpool Hope University, UK. Her publications explore the literary representation of travel, space and landscape in the long eighteenth century.

Kathryn Walchester teaches in the Department of English and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University, UK, and has published on nineteenth-century women’s European travel.