HISTORICIZING AMERICAN TRAVEL, AT HOME AND ABROAD

Abstract

In the winter of 1859, the Boston poet Julia Ward Howe sailed for Cuba; and in the winter of 1860, Ticknor and Fields published an account of her travel.A Trip to Cubaappeared only months after the same firm had published Richard Henry Dana's story of his “vacation voyage,”To Cuba and Back. These two narratives responded to a burgeoning American interest in the Caribbean island that promised recuperation to American invalids and adventure for military “filibusters.” Howe's narrative demonstrated a self-conscious familiarity with antebellum travel writing more broadly, however, as she playfully resisted yet ultimately upheld various conventions of a genre that had become a staple of the American literary marketplace. “I do not know why all celebrated people who write books of travel begin by describing their days of seasickness,” she noted, before discussing her own shipboard illness. She followed similar cues as she blended elements of autobiography, the social sketch, nature writing, and political and social commentary. Across 250 “sprightly” pages, readers were offered a familiar melange of humorous portraits, detailed descriptions of “foreign” institutions, and extensive commentary on local customs and social mores.