SOURCE: Hassan, Ihab. “Motion and Mischief: Contemporary British Travel Writing.” In Rumors of Change: Essays of Five Decades, pp. 208-27. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995.

In the following essay, Hassan focuses on travel writing originating in Britain, comparing two texts—one from the late-nineteenth century and another from the late-twentieth century—to explore shifts in the British travel writing genre.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am...