Writing on the Move: Form, Practice and (Im)mobility in Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century Travel Writing

Travel writing appears to be the most oxymoronic of genres: the practice of writing and reading typically requires stasis, and travel writing emerges from movement. From the concurrent physical and emotional journeys of Ella Maillart and Annemarie Schwarzenbach to the instantaneous digital discourses of contemporary urban travellers, and from the challenges of writing in the extreme conditions of the Antarctic to those of updating guidebooks via Google Streetview, this book examines the tensions between actual journeys and their resultant texts. Writing on the Move asks questions about the meaning of ‘movement’ – and what counts as ‘travel writing’ – in an age of virtual journeying and enforced immobility.

Samia Ounoughi is Senior Lecturer in English Linguistics at Université Grenoble Alpes. She is a member of LIDILEM and LABEX ITTEM where she works with geographers, cartographers, and historians. Her research deals with the relations between language and space, and she specialises in corpus discourse analysis of mountain travel writing. Publications include co-editing Exceptions and Exceptionality in Travel Writing with Anne-Florence Quaireau (2020) and Twenty-First Century Perspectives in British Travel Writing: Decentring Epistemologies with Emmanuelle Peraldo (2025).

Tim Hannigan is Assistant Lecturer in Writing and Literature at the Atlantic Technological University in Sligo, Ireland. He is also an experienced travel writer and the author of several books including The Granite Kingdom: A Cornish Journey (Apollo, 2023). His research focusses on ethical issues in contemporary and nineteenth-century travel writing. His work has been published in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Journeys, Terrae Incognitae, Studies in Travel Writing and various edited collections.