ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in subsequent chapters of this book. The debate into the accuracy of the diverse terms used to define different types of travel writing is well-known and continually developing. Travel writing, as Jan Borm, suggests, can perhaps best be judged not as a genre but as 'a collective term for a variety of texts both predominantly fictional and non-fictional whose main theme is travel'. Borm further suggests a distinction between the assumed non-fictional 'travel book' or 'travelogue' and 'travel writing' or 'travel literature', terms which can be used 'as an overall heading for texts whose main theme is travel'. In Travelers and Travel Liars, Percy Adams elucidates the complexities of the concept of truth telling and lying in the context of travel writing. The book considers the interplay between women's travel writing and other areas of literary creativity, such as life-writing, academic scholarship/connoisseurship, and novels/short story writing.
