Related Resources
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A few sites that may be of interest to the student of travel-narrative literature are listed below.
Many of the sites also offer their own
related resources information and therefore provide
an ever-expanding pool of resources from which to choose.
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| Links at the Library of Congress |
The Capital and the Bay: Narratives of Washington and the Chesapeake Bay Region, ca. 1600-1925 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lhcbhtml/lhcbhome.html) comprises 139 books selected from the Library of Congress's General Collections and two books from its Rare Book and Special Collections Division. The collection includes first-person narratives, early histories, historical biographies, promotional brochures, and books of photographs that capture in words and pictures that distinctive region as it developed between the onset of European settlement and the first quarter of the twentieth century.
The Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html) is an excellent resource for the early conservation writings of John Muir, Frederick Law Olmsted, and others who traveled throughout the United States documenting its natural resources and beauty and offering their insights on the nation's inhabitants.
"California as I Saw It": First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cbhtml/cbhome.html) covers the dramatic decades between the Gold Rush and the turn of the twentieth century. The collection captures the pioneer experience; encounters between Anglo-Americans and the diverse peoples who preceded them; the transformation of the land by mining, ranching, agriculture, and urban development; the often turbulent growth of communities and cities; and California's emergence as both a state and a place of uniquely American dreams.
Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/prhtml/prhome.html) features the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections. The majority of the collection is in Spanish, but English-language material includes accounts from U.S. soldiers documenting their adventures during the Spanish-American War.
Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910 (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/umhtml/umhome.html) portrays the states of Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century through first-person accounts, biographies, promotional literature, local histories, ethnographic and antiquarian texts, colonial archival documents, and other works drawn from the Library of Congress's General Collections and Rare Books and Special Collections Division. The collection's 138 volumes depict the land and its resources; the conflicts between settlers and Native peoples; the experience of pioneers, missionaries, soldiers, immigrants, and reformers; the growth of local communities and local cultural traditions; the development of regional and national leadership in agriculture, business, medicine, politics, religion, law, journalism, education; and the role of women.
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External Links
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The Making of America (http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/) site from the University of Michigan currently contains approximately eighty-five hundred books with nineteenth-century imprints. Search bibliographic records for "travel."
The Making of America (http://moa.cit.cornell.edu/moa/) site at Cornell, although journal oriented, has digitized 267 monograph volumes, a small number of which are travel narratives.
Donna M. Campbell, associate professor of English at Gonzaga University, has a site (http://guweb2.gonzaga.edu/faculty/campbell) that includes many links to travel narratives elsewhere on the Internet. Part of her course description is offered on her Web site.
Project Gutenberg (http://gutenberg.net/index.html) puts "famous and important" texts online for free use. Search on the subject term "travel" under Library of Congress classification E to retrieve a list of published travel-related items on this site.
The Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/) from the University of Michigan School of Information contains online text versions of travel narratives. Choose "books" from the Reading Room section to locate the books.
The Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania (http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/) contains a number of titles that link to other sites containing free online text. Browse subjects under the E and F classifications to locate travel narratives. To locate specific authors and titles, use the title and author search options.
George Mason University's Center for History and New Media (http://chnm.gmu.edu/whm/index.html) is a "Web site to help world history teachers and students locate, analyze, and learn from online primary sources." The site does not have actual travel narrative texts, but it offers valuable information on how to analyze primary historical materials found online, including travel narratives among many examples.
The University of Minnesota's Wilson Library's Electronic Text Research Center (http://etrc.lib.umn.edu/womtrav.htm) has an online collection of travel narratives emphasizing writings of women from and to the United States, circa 1830 to 1930.