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80-423: American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June 1842. While there he acted as a critical observer of North American society, almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style of his Pictures from Italy written four years later, where he wrote far more like a tourist. His American journey

160-697: A Tour to the Hebrides in 1786 and Goethe published his Italian Journey , based on diaries, in 1816. Fray Ilarione da Bergamo and Fray Francisco de Ajofrín wrote travel accounts of colonial Mexico in the 1760s. Fannie Calderón de la Barca , the Scottish-born wife of the Spanish ambassador to Mexico 1839–1842, wrote Life in Mexico , an important travel narrative of her time there, with many observations of local life. A British traveller, Mrs Alec Tweedie , published

240-676: A colonial mind-set; and Belated Travelers (1994), an analysis of colonial anxiety by Ali Behdad. Prizes awarded annually for travel books have included the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award , which ran from 1980 to 2004, the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature , and the Dolman Best Travel Book Award , which began in 2006. The Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Awards , which began in 1985, are given by

320-463: A conclusion, he gives his considered analysis of what he views as major flaws in US society. First and most serious is slavery. Apart from its corruption of both whites and blacks in slave states, the free states are complicit in the system. In particular, he is horrified by the physical violence vented on both male and female slaves. Next, he places violence. The ideals of liberty and equality seem to include

400-722: A full description of all he sees, of everything that happens, and writes it with such gusto, such mirth, such strokes of fine picturing, as appear in no other private letters ever given to the public." The range of subject-matter of the letters is described by his editor, Jenny Hartley: Scotland, Paris, and Venice ... child exploitation, Ragged Schools , and soup kitchens ... the Great Exhibition , women smoking, and dresses for reformed prostitutes ... ravens, waistcoats, and recipes for punch ... mesmerism and dreams ... terrible acting and wonderful children's birthday parties". Dickens's early sensational success as

480-402: A goose quill rather than a steel pen, and at first used black ink (now aged to brown), switching in the late 1840s to blue ink on blue paper. His biographer Fitzgerald described his handwriting as "so 'prompt', so alert, finished and full of purpose and decision; legible also, but requiring familiarity and training to read". He often ended his signature with an exuberant flourish, which became

560-406: A kind of trademark. Dickens's correspondents spanned the whole social scale of 19th century England from reformed street prostitutes to Queen Victoria herself. They included family members, of course, and Dickens's publishers; writers like Robert Browning , Thomas Carlyle , Wilkie Collins , George Eliot , John Forster , Alfred Tennyson (not yet ennobled), and William Makepeace Thackeray ;

640-439: A multitude of categories, ranging across print and online media. Letters of Charles Dickens The letters of Charles Dickens , of which more than 14,000 are known, range in date from about 1821, when Dickens was 9 years old, to 8 June 1870, the day before he died. They have been described as "invariably idiosyncratic, exuberant, vivid, and amusing…widely recognized as a significant body of work in themselves, part of

720-470: A number of travelogues, ranging from Denmark (1895) and Finland (1897), to the U.S. (1913), several on Mexico (1901, 1906, 1917), and one on Russia, Siberia, and China (1926). A more recent example is Che Guevara 's The Motorcycle Diaries . A travelogue is a film , book written up from a travel diary, or illustrated talk describing the experiences of and places visited by traveller. American writer Paul Theroux has published many works of travel literature,

800-455: A secretary but conducted his correspondence himself. Exceptions were made for begging letters, which his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth answered, and for routine business connected with his two magazines, Household Words and All the Year Round , which was handled by his assistant editor W. H. Wills , although Dickens preferred to correspond with the contributors himself. He wrote with

880-766: A series of books about discovering unique experiences in Canada, Australia and around the world. Bill Bryson in 2011 won the Golden Eagle Award from the Outdoor Writers and Photographers Guild. On 22 November 2012, Durham University officially renamed the Main Library the Bill Bryson Library for his contributions as the university's 11th chancellor (2005–11). Paul Theroux was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast , which

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960-415: A smart deal and the idolisation of successful businessmen. In this capitalist jungle, he finds most people far too serious and puritanical, lacking humour and a wider perspective. Finally, in many places he finds standards of personal cleanliness and public health still very primitive and is particularly disgusted by the almost universal habit of spitting. According to Dickens's biographer Michael Slater ,

1040-419: A special kind of texts that sometimes are disregarded in the literary world. They weave together aspects of memoir , non-fiction , and occasionally even fiction to produce a story that is equally about the trip and the goal. Throughout history, people have told stories about their travels like the ancient tales of explorers and pilgrims, as well as blogs and vlogs in recent time. A "factual" piece detailing

1120-438: A third in one volume, published by Macmillan , in 1893. Altogether they included roughly a thousand letters; but many were heavily cut for reasons of taste, and some were created by cut-and-pasting together extracts from several different letters in a way which was considered unacceptable even by late-Victorian standards. 1938 saw the publication in three volumes of almost 6,000 of the letters, edited by Walter Dexter as part of

1200-399: A trip to a distant country is that the travelogue emerged as a significant item in late nineteenth-century newspapers . Short stories genre of that era were influenced directly and significantly by the travelogues that shared many traits with short stories. Authors generally, especially Henry James and Guy de Maupassant , frequently wrote travelogues and short tales concurrently, often using

1280-510: A unique insight into the way Dickens's processes of composition worked as he wrestled with the novels he published and considered others which were never written, such as the "book whereof the whole story shall be on the top of the Great St. Bernard ". Dickens's almost constant travelling is also reflected. George Gissing wrote that "If he makes a tour in any part of the British Isles, he writes

1360-483: A wealth of geographical and topographical information into their writing, while the 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the noted poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) presented a philosophical and moral argument as its central purpose. Chinese travel literature of this period was written in a variety of different styles, including narratives , prose , essays and diaries , although most were written in prose. Zhou Daguan 's account of Cambodia in

1440-418: Is Frederick Douglass ' autobiographical Narrative , which is deeply intertwined with his travel experiences, beginning with his travels being entirely at the command of his masters and ending with him traveling when and where he wishes. Solomon Northup 's Twelve Years a Slave is a more traditional travel narrative, and he too overcomes the restrictions of law and tradition in the south to escape after he

1520-529: Is a prolific travel writer. Among his many travel books is the acclaimed Roads to Santiago . Englishmen Eric Newby , H. V. Morton , the Americans Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux , and Welsh author Jan Morris are or were widely acclaimed as travel writers (though Morris has frequently claimed herself as a writer of 'place' rather than travel per se ). Canadian travel writer Robin Esrock has written

1600-538: Is a type of travel literature that developed during the 18th and 19th centuries, detailing how slaves escaped the restrictive laws of the southern United States and the Caribbean to find freedom. As John Cox says in Traveling South , "travel was a necessary prelude to the publication of a narrative by a slave, for slavery could not be simultaneously experienced and written." A particularly famous slave travel narrative

1680-577: Is an autobiographical work by the British naturalist. It tells of the years that he lived as a child with his siblings and widowed mother on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939. It describes the life of the Durrell family in a humorous manner, and explores the fauna of the island. It is the first and most well-known of Durrell's "Corfu trilogy", together with Birds, Beasts, and Relatives and The Garden of

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1760-689: Is considered the first deaf-blind person to receive a significant education in English. His account of this meeting in American Notes would inspire Helen Keller 's parents to seek an education for their daughter. He was particularly critical of the American press and the sanitary conditions of American cities. He also wrote merciless parodies of the manners of the locals, including, but not limited to, their rural conversations and practice of spitting tobacco in public (Ch. 8 – Washington): As Washington may be called

1840-938: Is held by the Charles Dickens Museum in London, the second largest by the Victoria and Albert Museum , and the third largest by the Morgan Library & Museum in New York; other extensive collections are held by the British Library , the New York Public Library , the Huntington Library , and the Free Library of Philadelphia . In contrast, few letters to Dickens are known. Dickens often expressed his opposition to

1920-504: Is kidnapped and enslaved. Harriet Ann Jacobs ' Incidents includes significant travel that covers a small distance, as she escapes one living situation for a slightly better one, but also later includes her escape from slavery to freedom in the north. Some fictional travel stories are related to travel literature. Although it may be desirable in some contexts to distinguish fictional from non-fictional works, such distinctions have proved notoriously difficult to make in practice, as in

2000-457: Is known for A Walk in the Woods , made into a Hollywood film of the same name . There is no specific format for a travel journal, it typically includes details and reflections about an individual's experiences, observations, and emotions during the journey. Some of the common details in the journal include: The writings of escaped slaves of their experience under slavery and their escape from it

2080-411: Is right that it should do so"; one such critic thought that "it brings Dickens so close you can almost smell the cigar smoke". Dissenting voices have been few, and though Joel J. Brattin noted that there were some errors and omissions of transcription he endorsed it as being in general extremely accurate, and thought the project as a whole "of incomparable value". New Dickens letters are discovered at

2160-665: The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (generally considered a 1st century CE work; authorship is debated), Pausanias ' Description of Greece in the 2nd century CE, Safarnama (Book of Travels) by Nasir Khusraw (1003-1077), the Journey Through Wales (1191) and Description of Wales (1194) by Gerald of Wales , and the travel journals of Ibn Jubayr (1145–1214), Marco Polo (1254–1354), and Ibn Battuta (1304–1377), all of whom recorded their travels across

2240-585: The Times Literary Supplement , welcomed it with enthusiasm, while noting the sparse annotation and the fact that Hartley had chosen a representative selection of the letters, including a few rather trivial ones, rather than "a series of epistolary knock-out blows". Boyd Tonkin, in the Independent , found it to be "edited with unobtrusive intelligence and insight", Joyce Carol Oates thought it "more revealing and more intimate than any biography", and

2320-569: The Great Lakes area of both the United States and Canada, primarily by steamboat , but also by rail and coach. During his extensive itinerary, he made a particular point of visiting prisons and mental institutions and even took a quick glimpse at the prairie . Among his early visits to American institutions, Dickens visited Perkins School for the Blind near Boston, where he met Laura Bridgman , who

2400-470: The documentary , to the literary, as well as the journalistic, and from memoir to the humorous to the serious. They are often associated with tourism and include guide books . Travel writing may be found on web sites, in periodicals, on blogs and in books. It has been produced by a variety of writers, including travelers, military officers, missionaries, explorers, scientists, pilgrims, social and physical scientists, educators, and migrants. Travelogues are

2480-592: The primitivist presentations of foreign cultures; Haunted Journeys: Desire and Transgression in European Travel Writing (1991) by Dennis Porter, a close look at the psychological correlatives of travel; Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of Women's Travel Writing by Sara Mills , an inquiry into the intersection of gender and colonialism during the 19th century; Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), Mary Louise Pratt 's influential study of Victorian travel writing's dissemination of

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2560-538: The 18th century, travel literature was commonly known as "books of travels", which mainly consisted of maritime diaries . In 18th-century Britain, travel literature was highly popular, and almost every famous writer worked in the travel literature form; Gulliver's Travels (1726), for example, is a social satire imitating one, and Captain James Cook 's diaries (1784) were the equivalent of today's best-sellers. Alexander von Humboldt 's Personal narrative of travels to

2640-705: The Dickens canon". They were written to family, friends, and the contributors to his literary periodicals, who included many of the leading writers of the day. Their letters to him were almost all burned by Dickens because of his horror at the thought of his private correspondence being laid open to public scrutiny. The reference edition of Dickens's letters is the 12-volume Pilgrim Edition, edited by Graham Storey et al. and published by Oxford University Press . Dickens received, by his own count, 60 to 80 letters every day, and when pressure of work permitted he replied to them without delay. For most of his life he did not employ

2720-632: The Gods (1978). Ivan T. Sanderson published Animal Treasure , a report of an expedition to the jungles of then-British West Africa; Caribbean Treasure , an account of an expedition to Trinidad , Haiti , and Surinam , begun in late 1936 and ending in late 1938; and Living Treasure , an account of an expedition to Jamaica , British Honduras (now Belize ) and the Yucatán . These authors are naturalists , who write in support of their fields of study. Another naturalist, Charles Darwin , wrote his famous account of

2800-474: The Nonesuch Edition of Dickens's Works. This was an expensively-priced edition limited to 877 copies, and was therefore not easily accessible to the ordinary reader unless he had either ample means or access to a university library. Moreover, Dexter's editorial practices were far from rigorous: there was hardly any annotation, and many of the letters were simply copied from previous editions rather than from

2880-608: The Russian Ivan Goncharov , who wrote about his experience of a tour around the world in Frigate "Pallada" (1858), and Lafcadio Hearn , who interpreted the culture of Japan with insight and sensitivity. The 20th century's interwar period has been described as a heyday of travel literature when many established writers such as Graham Greene , Robert Byron , Rebecca West , Freya Stark , Peter Fleming and Evelyn Waugh were traveling and writing notable travel books. In

2960-651: The SATW Foundation, and include two awards for travel books and travel guidebooks, as well as awards for travel coverage in publications, websites, and broadcast and audio-visual formats, and for magazine, newspaper, and website articles in a variety of categories. The National Outdoor Book Awards also recognize travel literature in the outdoor and adventure areas, as do the Banff Mountain Book Awards. The North American Travel Journalists Association holds an annual awards competition honoring travel journalism in

3040-468: The United States, visiting many of the places mentioned by the author in his book. Online editions Travel literature One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias , a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern period , James Boswell 's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1786) helped shape travel memoir as a genre. Early examples of travel literature include

3120-601: The White Cow: Memories of an Irish Island (1986), and Peter Mayle 's best-selling A Year in Provence (1989) and its sequels. Travel and nature writing merge in many of the works by Sally Carrighar , Gerald Durrell and Ivan T. Sanderson . Sally Carrighar's works include One Day at Teton Marsh (1965), Home to the Wilderness (1973), and Wild Heritage (1965). Gerald Durrell 's My Family and Other Animals (1956)

3200-492: The artists Clarkson Stanfield and Daniel Maclise ; and the actor William Macready . Letters to several of his friends have little or no representation in the surviving correspondence because they were destroyed by the recipients, their heirs, or by random accidents of history. These correspondents include his daughter Katey , Augustus Egg , Chauncy Hare Townshend , Hablot K. Browne ("Phiz") , Richard Barham , James Muspratt , and his lover Ellen Ternan . The letters are

3280-430: The author of The Pickwick Papers induced many people to keep any letters he might send them. This, along with his huge output of letters, ensured that many thousands have survived. In 1965 the editors of his letters reckoned them to number nearly 12,000; by 2002 they had amended the total to 14,252. Though some letters are in private hands, most are now in libraries and public institutions. The largest collection

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3360-546: The book are devoted to a criticism of the practice. He was also unhappy about copyright issues. Dickens, by this time, had become an international celebrity, but owing to the lack of an international copyright law, bootleg copies of his works were freely available in North America and he could not abide losing money. Dickens called for international copyright law in many of his speeches in America, and his persistence in discussing

3440-501: The bottom he called frigida incuriositas ("a cold lack of curiosity"). He then wrote about his climb, making allegorical comparisons between climbing the mountain and his own moral progress in life. Michault Taillevent  [ fr ] , a poet for the Duke of Burgundy , travelled through the Jura Mountains in 1430 and recorded his personal reflections, his horrified reaction to

3520-604: The brothers Robert Shirley and Anthony Shirley , and for India Duarte Barbosa , Ralph Fitch , Ludovico di Varthema , Cesare Federici , and Jan Huyghen van Linschoten . Humanist travellers in Europe also produced accounts, often noting monuments and inscriptions, e.g., Seyfried Rybisch 's Itinerarium (1570s), Michel de Montaigne 's Journal de voyage (1581), Germain Audebert's  [ fr ] Voyage d'Italie (1585) and Aernout van Buchel 's Iter Italicum (1587–1588). In

3600-596: The critic Graham Hough , though Graham Storey soon took over Hough's role. The first volume of the Pilgrim Trust Edition, as it was named, was eventually published by Oxford University Press under their Clarendon Press imprint in 1965, and 11 more volumes appeared periodically, the last one in 2002. The editorial team changed over the years, with Madeline House, Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson , K. J. Fielding, Nina Burgis and Angus Easson all being named as editor at various points. The British Academy took over

3680-539: The equinoctial regions of America, during the years 1799–1804 , originally published in French, was translated to multiple languages and influenced later naturalists, including Charles Darwin . Other later examples of travel literature include accounts of the Grand Tour : aristocrats, clergy, and others with money and leisure time travelled Europe to learn about the art and architecture of its past. One tourism literature pioneer

3760-429: The expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became his station singularly well. Although generally impressed by what he found, he could not forgive the continued existence of slavery in the United States , which he described as "that most hideous blot and foul disgrace ..." The final chapters of

3840-546: The famous instance of the travel writings of Marco Polo or John Mandeville . Examples of fictional works of travel literature based on actual journeys are: In the 21st century, travel literature became a genre of social media in the form of travel blogs, with travel bloggers using outlets like personal blogs , Pinterest , Twitter , Facebook , Instagram and travel websites to convey information about their adventures, and provide advice for navigating particular countries, or for traveling generally. Travel blogs were among

3920-718: The financing of the project, and from 1995 it was renamed the British Academy – Pilgrim Trust Edition. An electronic version of the edition has been published by InteLex Past Masters . The Pilgrim Edition includes some 14,000 letters addressed to 2,500 known correspondents and to more than 200 unnamed and unidentifiable ones. Not all of the originals of these letters can be found; some are printed from short extracts in sale catalogues and similar sources, and some are only known from mentions of their existence in other letters. Dickens's biographer Claire Tomalin reported that "Each volume of this edition wins acclaim as it appears, and it

4000-583: The first instances of blogging, which began in the mid-1990s. Notable travel bloggers include Matthew Kepnes , Johnny Ward , and Drew Binsky . The systematic study of travel literature emerged as a field of scholarly inquiry in the mid-1990s, with its own conferences, organizations, journals, monographs, anthologies, and encyclopedias. Important, pre-1995 monographs are: Abroad (1980) by Paul Fussell , an exploration of British interwar travel writing as escapism; Gone Primitive: Modern Intellects, Savage Minds (1990) by Marianna Torgovnick, an inquiry into

4080-421: The first success being The Great Railway Bazaar . In addition to published travel journals, archive records show that it was historically common for travellers to record their journey in diary format, with no apparent intention of future publication, but as a personal record of their experiences. This practice is particularly visible in nineteenth-century European travel diaries. Anglo-American Bill Bryson

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4160-467: The form of travel websites . A travel journal, also called road journal, is a record made by a traveller, sometimes in diary form, of the traveler's experiences, written during the course of the journey and later edited for publication. This is a long-established literary format; an early example is the writing of Pausanias (2nd century CE) who produced his Description of Greece based on his own observations. James Boswell published his The Journal of

4240-504: The fragmentary or routine business nature of many of the letters included, has encouraged the publication of selections of Dickens's letters, intended for the general reader rather than the scholar. In 1985 David Paroissien edited The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens , taking his texts from the Nonesuch Edition, substantive textual variants from the first five volumes of the Pilgrim Edition (the only ones then published) being listed in

4320-403: The freedom to shoot or knife any other American. Third, he cites what he calls universal distrust, the extreme individualism that leads people to suspect others and to seek advantage over them. With a few exceptions, the scandal-seeking press contributes by undermining private life and destroying confidence in public life. Allied to this is the overriding commercialism, with the urge to pull off

4400-674: The globe. Fictional travel narratives may also show this tendency, as in Mark Twain 's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) or Robert M. Pirsig 's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). Sometimes a writer will settle into a locality for an extended period, absorbing a sense of place while continuing to observe with a travel writer's sensibility. Examples of such writings include Lawrence Durrell 's Bitter Lemons (1957), Bruce Chatwin 's widely acclaimed In Patagonia (1977) and The Songlines (1987), Deborah Tall 's The Island of

4480-527: The headquarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening. In Washington, D.C., he called upon President John Tyler in the White House , writing that: ... he looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might; being at war with everybody – but

4560-922: The journey of HMS Beagle at the intersection of science, natural history and travel. A number of writers famous in other fields have written about their travel experiences. Examples are Samuel Johnson 's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1775); Charles Dickens ' American Notes for General Circulation (1842); Mary Wollstonecraft 's Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796); Hilaire Belloc 's The Path To Rome (1902); D. H. Lawrence 's Twilight in Italy and Other Essays (1916); Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays (1927); Rebecca West 's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941); and John Steinbeck 's Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962). The Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom

4640-535: The known world in detail. As early as the 2nd century CE, Lucian of Samosata discussed history and travel writers who added embellished, fantastic stories to their works. The travel genre was a fairly common genre in medieval Arabic literature . In China, 'travel record literature' ( Chinese : 遊記文學 ; pinyin : yóujì wénxué ) became popular during the Song dynasty (960–1279). Travel writers such as Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641) incorporated

4720-565: The late 20th century there was a surge in popularity of travel writing, particularly in the English-speaking world with writers such as Bruce Chatwin , Paul Theroux , Jonathan Raban , Colin Thubron , and others. While travel writing previously had mainly attracted interest by historians and biographers, critical studies of travel literature now also developed into an academic discipline in its own right. Travel books come in styles ranging from

4800-431: The notes. The scholar John Espey wrote that this selection constitutes "a full review of almost all that we know of Dickens's activities as editor, public figure, father, husband, lecturer and lover", and that it "should satisfy for some time both the general reader and the specialist". In 2012, Dickens's bicentenary year, Jenny Hartley edited a one-volume selection from the Pilgrim Edition. Claire Harman , writing in

4880-459: The only extended autobiographical writing by Dickens that has survived. Attempts at writing a diary seldom lasted long and for the most part the manuscripts are lost, while a memoir of his childhood was discontinued and converted into some of the early chapters of David Copperfield . The letters therefore give the most immediate and vivid expression of Dickens's life as seen by himself, even though they rarely examine his interior life. They give

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4960-464: The originals, with the inevitable result that the texts were not always accurate. In 1949 the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis set a new edition in motion, with a grant of £6000 from the Pilgrim Trust and the Dickens scholar Humphry House in place as editor. In 1955, with almost 10,000 letters transcribed, House died unexpectedly. His widow Madeline House took over the project in collaboration with

5040-657: The publication of The Life of Charles Dickens (1872–74) by his lifelong friend John Forster. Many of Dickens's letters to Forster were included, but they were heavily and rather dishonestly edited to make Forster seem a more central figure in Dickens's life than he had always been. In 1878 it was announced that a collection of Dickens's letters would be edited by his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. In collaboration with Dickens's eldest daughter Mary she duly produced The Letters of Charles Dickens in three volumes, which were published by Chapman & Hall between 1880 and 1882. A second edition in two volumes followed in 1882, and

5120-516: The publication of private letters, and was determined to suffer from it himself as little as possible. He burned those letters that had been sent to him in a mass bonfire in 1860, commenting, "Would to God that every letter I had ever written was on that pile". He burned more in 1869, the year before he died. As a result, hardly more than 250 letters to Dickens have survived to the present day. The reading public's first chance to study large numbers of Dickens letters came shortly after his death with

5200-713: The rate of about 20 per year, and they were for some years edited and published in Supplements to the Pilgrim Edition in The Dickensian , the journal of the Dickens Fellowship . They have also been made accessible online by the Charles Dickens Letters Project, and it is intended eventually to publish a supplementary volume to the Pilgrim Edition. The costliness of both the Nonesuch and Pilgrim volumes, and

5280-591: The same countries as their settings . Travel literature often intersects with philosophy or essay writing, as in V. S. Naipaul 's India: A Wounded Civilization (1976), whose trip became the occasion for extended observations on a nation and people. This is similarly the case in Rebecca West 's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), focused on her journey through Yugoslavia, and in Robin Esrock 's series of books about his discoveries in Canada, Australia and around

5360-651: The sheer rock faces, and the terrifying thunderous cascades of mountain streams. Antoine de la Sale ( c.  1388  – c.  1462 ), author of Petit Jehan de Saintre , climbed to the crater of a volcano in the Lipari Islands in 1407, leaving us with his impressions. "Councils of mad youth" were his stated reasons for going. In the mid-15th century, Gilles le Bouvier, in his Livre de la description des pays , gave us his reason to travel and write: Because many people of diverse nations and countries delight and take pleasure, as I have done in times past, in seeing

5440-466: The subject led some critics to accuse him of having travelled to America primarily to agitate for that cause. Dickens's letters home to his friends, including Forster and illustrator Daniel Maclise , helped to form the basis of the book. Throughout the narrative, finding much to admire in Americans he met and in their way of life, he also notes what he sees as their faults, sometimes jocularly. Then, in

5520-433: The taste of visiting the lakes by furnishing the traveller with a Guide; and for that purpose, the writer has here collected and laid before him, all the select stations and points of view, noticed by those authors who have last made the tour of the lakes, verified by his own repeated observations. To this end he included various 'stations' or viewpoints around the lakes, from which tourists would be encouraged to appreciate

5600-409: The thirteenth century is among the major sources for the city of Angkor in its prime. One of the earliest known records of taking pleasure in travel, of travelling for the sake of travel and writing about it, is Petrarch 's (1304–1374) ascent of Mont Ventoux in 1336. He states that he went to the mountaintop for the pleasure of seeing the top of the famous height. His companions who stayed at

5680-483: The title American Notes for General Circulation may have been a joke at the expense of American currency. The end of the Second Bank of the United States and the ensuing Panic of 1837 led to widespread bank failures and rendered much paper currency worthless. The book formed the basis for Dickens in America (2005), an authored documentary series by Miriam Margolyes in which she followed Dickens's journey through

5760-619: The views in terms of their aesthetic qualities. Published in 1778 the book was a major success. Mariana Starke popularized what became the standard travel guide, a reference book that can include information relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are also often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet. Travel guides can also take

5840-500: 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. By the 16th century, accounts to travels to India and Persia had become common enough that they had been compiled into collections such as the Novus Orbis (" New World ") by Simon Grynaeus , and collections by Ramusio and Richard Hakluyt . 16th century travelers to Persia included

5920-548: The world on June 27, 1898. A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists". An early example is Thomas West 's guide to the English Lake District , published in 1778. Thomas West , an English priest , popularized the idea of walking for pleasure in his guide to the Lake District of 1778. In the introduction he wrote that he aimed: to encourage

6000-570: The world. In the world of sailing Frank Cowper 's Sailing Tours (1892–1896) and Joshua Slocum 's Sailing Alone Around the World (1900) are classics of outdoor adventure literature. In April 1895, Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston, Massachusetts and in Sailing Alone Around the World , he described his departure in the following manner: More than three years later, Slocum returned to Newport, Rhode Island , having circumnavigated

6080-504: Was Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) with An Inland Voyage (1878), and Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (1879), about his travels in the Cévennes (France), is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags . Other notable writers of travel literature in the 19th century include

6160-726: Was adapted for the 1986 movie of the same name. He was also awarded in 1989 the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award for Riding the Iron Rooster . In 2005, Jan Morris was awarded the Golden PEN Award by English PEN for "a Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature". The French writer, Lucie Azema , has noted that the majority of travel writing is by men and even when women have written travel books, these tend to be forgotten. In her book Les femmes aussi sont du voyage (Women are also travellers), she has argued that male travel writing gives an unequal, colonialist and misogynistic view of

6240-569: Was also an inspiration for his novel Martin Chuzzlewit . Having arrived in Boston , he visited Lowell , New York, and Philadelphia , and travelled as far south as Richmond , as far west as St. Louis and as far north as Quebec . The American city he liked best was Boston – "the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay. [...] The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to impress all strangers very favourably." Further, it

6320-452: Was at once mobbed. Dickens at first revelled in the attention, but soon the endless demands on his time began to wear on his enthusiasm. He complained in a letter to his friend John Forster : I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. He travelled mainly on the East Coast and

6400-463: Was close to the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind where Dickens encountered Laura Bridgman , who impressed him greatly. On 3 January 1842, one month shy of his 30th birthday, Dickens sailed with his wife, Catherine , and her maid, Anne Brown, from Liverpool on board the steamship RMS Britannia bound for America. Arriving in Boston on 22 January 1842, the author

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