Abstract
This exhibition displays a selection of actual itineraries alongside invented accounts in order to discover what readers seek in their mental travels. Whether narrating pious pilgrimages, enlightenment voyages or exotic encounters, travel writing always aims to move readers (and to move books off the publisher's shelves).
These examples of the visual and verbal delights of the University's collections continue to fascinate us with their skewed perspectives, partial insights, and astounding energy.
Drawn primarily from the riches of the de Beer collection, with other material from special collections and Central Library holdings and from the Hocken Library and pictorial collections, this exhibition displays the remarkable breadth of the University's treasures. Moving outward from Rome as the centre of the European imagination, we traverse Europe through the mid-19th century, roam the Atlantic to the Americas and Africa, and finally conquer the Pacific in search of new territory and ideas. We witness travellers as pilgrims, explorers, diplomats and tourists. We encounter new creatures, renewed appreciation of domestic attractions, and a constant tension between fact and fiction. While the material displayed focuses primarily on works in English, similar publications appeared in every European language.