Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.

The contributors to this book reveal different approaches to creating a colony. Using the rich collections of the Mitchell Library, the authors go beyond the traditional sources of history, highlighting the personal stories revealed through family letters, and creative interaction with the landscape through poetry and drawings.

Focusing on a time when the world had not been fully mapped or traveled, this book presents sights as witnessed through the eyes of Charles Darwin, Matthew Fontaine Maury, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Meriwether Lewis, Rudyard Kipling, Willa Cather, and many others.