In the
Encyclopedia of Travel Literature
, an expert sketches the lives and achievements of explorers, adventurers, novelists, and poets from l450 to the present and describes, critiques, and quotes from their works.
Before visual media, readers learned about foreign countries, exotic realms, other peoples, and intrepid adventurers through travel writers. Here you'll read about Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who died in 1817 on his return trip from Mecca and was buried still disguised as a Muslim; George Sand, who scandalized Europe by illegally wearing trousers and wrote a singularly interesting travel book; and Lord Byron, who fictionalized his Grand Tour in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.