ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in detail the works of four literary travelers to the Holy Land, beginning with the earliest, John Lloyd Stephens's Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea, and the Holy Land, followed by discussions Bayard Taylor's 'The Lands of the Saracen', George William Curtis's Howaji in Syria, and William Cullen Bryant's Letters from the East. John Lloyd Stephens had already traveled extensively in the American West and in Europe by the time he undertook his trip to the Holy Land. Unlike many of the travelers who came after him, Stephens arrived in the Holy Land at a time when travel there still involved real risks for European and American travelers, and well before the Holy Land tour became part of the standard American tourist experience. Edgar Allan Poe emphasizes both the Americans of Stephens's writing and the characteristics that make Stephens's writing distinct from texts that are too redolent of the utilitarian American business ethic.
