National Identity. The popularity of travel accounts testified to a growing interest in American national identity on both sides of the ocean. As Americans sought to establish for themselves the basis and significance of a distinctively American culture, they looked to their own and others' accounts of life in the United States to see how Americans lived and discover what made them different from other cultures. As American civilization pushed westward, the new experiences provided by the Western environment and inhabitants had to be incorporated into changing definitions of what was and was not American. By publishing accounts of American life, American and foreign authors helped to shape impressions of what the nation was and what it could be.

Irving. Perhaps the best-known example of American travel writing during these decades was Washington living's The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon, first published in the United...