Travel Accounts in Manuscript and Print

Travel manuscripts and printed books tell us how scribes and printers had to think carefully about representing foreign lands. Sometimes this meant turning the ordinary into the marvellous to capture the imagination of their readers; at other times this meant turning the strange into the recognisable. The manuscripts and printed books they produced translated tales of the unfamiliar into material palatable for domestic readers, which often required a careful balance of accuracy in relating travellers’ accounts and imagination to satisfy readers’ appetites for novelties. This essay looks at how travel literature circulated in manuscripts, how printers took advantage of the appetite for travel narratives, and what hybrid forms of manuscript and print tell us about who was reading them and the way travel literature was being read. As travel literature is a broad category that encompasses marvellous accounts, diaries, itineraries, letters, guidebooks, devotional aids, maps, and other narratives, my aim is not to offer a comprehensive overview but a few examples that demonstrate how the material context of travel literature can reveal much about their reception, use, and development.

Fifteenth · Late modernity · Lived experience · Middle Ages · Resource (disambiguation) · Sociocultural evolution · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · Historical Influence and Diplomacy