ABSTRACT

The issue of truth has been one of the most constant, complex, and contentious in the cultural history of travel writing. Whether the travel was undertaken in the name of exploration, pilgrimage, science, inspiration, self-discovery, or a combination of these elements, questions of veracity and authenticity inevitably arise.

Women, Travel, and Truth is a collection of twelve essays that explore the manifold ways in which travel and truth interact in women's travel writing. Essays range in date from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu in the eighteenth century to Jamaica Kincaid in the twenty-first, across such regions as India, Italy, Norway, Siberia, Austria, the Orient, the Caribbean, China and Mexico. Topics explored include blurred distinctions of fiction and non-fiction; travel writing and politics; subjectivity; displacement, and exile. Students and academics with interests in literary studies, history, geography, history of art, and modern languages will find this book an important reference.

chapter 1|7 pages

Introduction

part I|49 pages

Boundaries and Instabilities

chapter 2|19 pages

“One Could Never Reckon Up All Her Misstatements!”

Lies and Deception in the Life and Texts of Kate Marsden, Traveller to Siberia in the 1890s

chapter 3|14 pages

Uncovering Silences

The Elisions in Vita Sackville-West's Passenger to Teheran

chapter 4|14 pages

“What Norway Really Is”

Women's Travel Writing, Reality, and the Supernatural in Nineteenth-Century Norway

part II|47 pages

Subjectivity and Honesty

chapter 5|16 pages

The Precise and the Subjective

The Guidebook Industry and Women's Travel Writing in Late Nineteenth-Century Europe and North Africa

chapter 6|14 pages

Refracting the Raj

Hariot Dufferin's Photographs of India, 1884–88

chapter 7|15 pages

“If Female Envy Did Not Spoil Every Thing in the World of Women”

Lies, Rivalry, and Reputation in Lady Elizabeth Craven's Travelogues

part III|32 pages

Travel and Reality

chapter 9|15 pages

Reading between the Lines

The Politics of Authenticity in Naomi Mitchison's Vienna Diary

part IV|46 pages

Reality and Text

chapter 10|15 pages

Breaking the Truth

Jamaica Kincaid and the Politics of Travel