Vita Sackville-West began Passenger to Teheran (1926) by suggesting that because "travel is the most private of pleasures," writing about that pleasure is suspect: "There would seem to be something definitely wrong about all letters of travel, and even about books of travel. . . . There would seem, going a step further, to be something wrong about travel itself. Of what use is it, if we may communicate our experience neither verbally nor on paper"" For Sackville-West travel was a pleasure that eluded reason; it had to be described in a language that appeals to the senses rather than the intellect.

Readers of Sackville-West's two travel books will not find historical facts or discussions of local customs or cultures. Instead they encounter a world of impressions that reveals more about the writer's vision than it does about the country she is describing: "But for my part, I would not forgo the...