Travel & Adventure

Light hearted wisdom
An  Online Anthology North American Travel Literature
(Assembled by Media History students) 

“Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road … Here is the test of wisdom…  that provokes it out of the soul.” Walt Whitman, Song of the Open Road    

1. Collections  and other anthologies 

• American Journeys —   Hundreds of full text travelogs in the public domain 
• Journeys: An American Story – Stories of 20^th and 21^st century immigrants

2. Inspirations    

• Walt Whitman – Song of the Open Road
• David McCullough – National Gallery of Art  lecture 
• Joseph Campbell and the Heroes Journey  (archive.org)
• Antonin Dvorak – The New World Symphony       

3.  The Old world meets the New

• Christopher Columbus, 1500, Letter to Prince John
•  Thomas Hariot, 1590, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land Of Virginia,
• Capt. John Smith, 1624 – The General Historie of Virginia …
• Peter Kalm, 1772, “Travels Into North America,”
• Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Expedition,  1804 – 1806  Journals

4. Understanding  Americans    

• Frances Trollope – 1832 –  Domestic Manners of the Americans
• Alexis  De Tocqueville  – 1835 – Democracy in America
• John Benwell – c 1830 – An Englishman’s Travels in America
• Harriet Martineau – 1837 – Society in America
• Frederick Marryat – 1838 – Diary in America
• Charles Dickens  – 1842 – American Notes
• Rudyard Kipling – 1891 – American Notes     
• A. Safroni-Middleton – 1916 – Vagabond’s Odyssey
• Phillip Gibbs – 1920 – People of Destiny: Americans as I saw them at home and abroad.
• G.K. Chesterton – 1922 – What I saw in America

5. The South    

• John Lawson – 1700 – A new Voyage to Carolina
• William Bartram  – 1791  Travels through North and South Carolina
• Anne Royall – 1822 – Letters from Alabama; also Sketches of History, Life and Manners in the United States; and The Black Book, a Continuation of Travels in the United States.  
• William Cullen Bryant – 1850 Letters of a Traveller  Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America
• Frederick Law Olmsted (Yoeman in the NY Times) – 1853
• William Howard Russell 1861  The Civil War in America
• Harriet Beecher Stowe  1873  Palmetto-Leaves   
• Ida B Wells — 1895 – Southern Horrors
• Ray Stannard Baker – 1908 Following the Color Line   
• John and Olive Dame Campbell – 1921 – The Southern Highlander and his Homeland
•  John Howard Griffin – 1961 – Black Like Me
• Harry M. Caudill –  1962 – Night Comes to the Cumberlands 
  

  Metropolitan museum exhibit of travel journals

6. The Rivers

• Harriet Martineau 1838 — Mississippi Voyage
• Henry David Thoreau – 1857  – Canoeing in the Wilderness
• N. H. Bishop, 1878, Voyage of the Paper Canoe
• Mark Twain – 1883 – Life on the Mississippi.
• George Byron Merrick, 1909. Old Times on the Upper Mississippi
• Mark Neuzil – 2012 – Natural History of the Canoe

7. The West    

• Gabriel Franchere  1811   Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America
• Catharine Parr Strickland Traill  – 1836 – The Backwoods of Canada
• Susanna Moodie 1852 Roughing it in the Bush, Life in the Clearings  
• John C. Freemont, The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains and Canada, 1753
• Thomas Mayne Reid 1858  The Desert Home 
• Horace Greeley —  1860  Overland Journey 
• Frederick Law Olmsted  — 1865 —  Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove
• Isabella Bird – 1879  – A lady’s life in the Rocky Mountains
• George Palmer Putnam – 1915 – In the Oregon Country   

8.  Wild Trails 

• Henry David Thoreau – 1849 – A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, also Cape Cod 
• Francis Parkman – 1849 – The Oregon Trail
• J. Smeaton Chase – 1911 – Yosemite Trails  
• John Muir — 1918 – Steep Trails
• Mary Roberts Rinehart –  1916 Through Glacier Park, 1918 – Tenting tonight
• Bill Bryson – 1998  – A walk in the woods (Appalachian Trail)
• Cheryl Strayed – 2012 – Wild: From Lost to found on the Pacific Crest Trail.    

9. The Far North

• Richard Hakluyt.  1615 – Voyages in Search of the Northwest Passage
• Samuel Hearne 1769 – A Journey  from the Prince of Wales Fort in Hudson’s Bay to the Northern Ocean  
• Alexander MacKenzie 1801. — Voyages from Montreal.
• John Franklin.  1828  Journey to the Polar Sea 
• Fridtjof Nansen, 1898 – Farest North   
• May Kellogg Sullivan 1902. A Woman who went to Alaska
• Robert E. Peary, 1910 – The North Pole
• Ernest Thompson Seton, 1911 – The  Arctic Prairies   

10.  South of the Border 

• John L. Stephens 1848 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan
• Maturin M. Ballou.  1854 History of Cuba; or, Notes of a Traveller in the Tropics
• Nelly Bly 1888 Six months in Mexico.   
• Marian M. George.  1916 A Little Journey to Puerto Rico 

11. On the Road 

• Jack London – 1890 – The Road    —   The Iron Heel — Call of the Wild — White Fang —
• Effie Price Gladding 1915  Across the Continent by the Lincoln Highway
• Sinclair Lewis, 1919 – Free Air 
• C.K. Shepherd – 1922 – Across America by Motor Cycle
• Victor Hugo Green –  1936 – The Green Book
• Ernie Pyle – 1938 – Home Country   
•   Jack Keroac – On the Road 1957   
• Charles Kuralt  – 1970s – 80s   On the Road with CBS
• William Least Heat Moon    1982  Blue Highways

11.  Journeys into the past.

• James McPherson, Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg  
• Upton Sinclair, Cry for Justice: An anthology of social protest 

12. Immigration

• Don Watson – 2018 – American Journeys
• Katy Long – 2017 – American Journeys