Writing on the Move: Form, Practice and (Im)mobility in Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century Travel Writing

Travel writing appears to be the most oxymoronic of genres: the practice of writing and reading typically requires stasis, and travel writing emerges from movement. From the concurrent physical and emotional journeys of Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach to the instantaneous digital discourses of contemporary urban travellers, and from the challenges of writing in the extreme conditions of the Antarctic to those of updating guidebooks via Google Streetview, this book examines the tensions between actual journeys and their resultant texts. Writing on the Move asks questions about the meaning of ‘movement’ – and what counts as ‘travel writing’ – in an age of virtual journeying and enforced immobility.