Tracking Travel Inspired by Literature

Kelly Jane Torrance believes she has identified a new travel-writing subgenre: literature inspired travel writing. As the journalism maxim goes, two examples is a coincidence and three is a trend. So what are Torrance’s three examples for her American Enterprise piece? Julia Llewellyn Smith’s “Traveling on the Edge: Journeys in the Footsteps of Graham Greene,” Emma Larkin’s Finding George Orwell in Burma and Andrew Eames’s “The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie.”

Why did this subgenre develop? Torrance writes: “So much has been said about the most loved destinations—Paris, Provence, Tuscany—that yet another tome on one of these places seems entirely superfluous.” Torrance neglected to mention a long-existing site dedicated to travel stories about writers and the places they ventured: Literary Traveler.

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