Return Passages: Great American Travel Writing, 1780-1910

by Larzer Ziff

This book, the first to trace the distinctive history of American travel writing, focuses on five great representatives of the John Ledyard who set out to walk around the world in the 1700s; John Lloyd Stephens, the father of Mayan archaeology; Bayard Taylor, the nineteenth-century wanderer who invented travel writing as a profession; Mark Twain, who focused on the haps and mishaps of the uncultivated tourist; and Henry James, from whose cosmopolitan accounts of other societies travel writing emerged as great art.

Genres: History

320 pages, Hardcover

First published December 11, 2000

About the author

Larzer Ziff is Caroline Donovan Research Professor of English at The Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to study with Larzer Ziff during college. This book is one of the main reasons I stayed interested in literary criticism. Ziff makes essential critical points in a straightforward, highly engaging style, avoiding the unreadable, stilted puffery-prose of so much literary criticism. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in American literature or American history.