19th and 20th Century American Women Travel Writers

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Women’s travel writing has created lasting effects on historical events from its unique point of view of the outside world within the minds and voices of people who have not often been heard or exposed. Travel writing is not a new aspect of literature, especially for women. It has been around for centuries and has taught in the ways of history a perspective of a tourist. A tourist carries a fresh mindset of a place or event which is not standard for them. Therefore, travel writing carries a distinct perspective of historical events. In the late nineteenth century, leading into the early twentieth century, though women were now finding their way into a more flexible world as styles changed along with ideas and characteristics of women, for example, the "Flapper" era, there was still an idea of prejudice in some forms of sexism for the lesser ideals of women in an occupation compared to men. With the early twentieth century women writers leading into a more modern era, a new generation is able to see the once long hidden voices and inspirations of women who were distinctly interested in this style and genre of writing, continuing into a new role in society for women altogether, which will especially involve sentiments even more concealed from ethnically diverse women. Exploring the evolution of travel writing from a woman’s perspective will not only express an uncommon and imperative viewpoint, especially in racial and gender related aspects concerning vastly different contexts between men and women and of women of color, but will also exhibit lasting impacts made by this genre throughout history.
Travel writing is known as a form of writing which teaches global history. This explains the history of not only the world, but of the...

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... of their great influences. What could be much different from a man’s interpretation of the same events? Women have lied under the surface in occupations such as writing, however, have helped build and create small changes in our world today. These women, such as Blair Niles, who was a founding member of The Society of Women Geographers, did not sit idly by waiting for change to occur. More of this genre of writing would include Rose Wilder Lane and her companion “Troub” or Helen Dore Boylston, as mentioned earlier in their trek across 1920’s Europe, Jan Morris, a travel writer who traveled the world in about fifty years of travel writing, and Elizabeth Cochrane, also known as Nellie Bly, who would become the first person to circumnavigate the globe in under Eighty Days, taking after the fictional character from Jules Verne’s novel, ‘Around the World in Eighty Days’.

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