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We tend to think of the authors of travel books and the authors of fiction books as two separate and distinct categories of writer. You\u2019ve got your Tocqueville\u2019s and Bill Bryson\u2019s on one side, and your F. Scott Fitzgerald\u2019s and Harper Lee\u2019s on another.<\/span><\/p>\n But there have in fact been plenty of writers \u2014 including some of literature\u2019s most luminous novelists \u2014 who have worked in both genres. Often to great effect: unsurprisingly, the talents which lend themselves to worthy fiction \u2014 the ability to impart colorful details, paint immersive scenes, and capture the dialogue and character of people and places \u2014 are also those which create effective and engaging retellings of true-life adventures. <\/span><\/p>\n Below you\u2019ll find five of the best travelogues that were penned by famous authors who are better known for their fiction. If you\u2019ve enjoyed these writers\u2019 novels, you\u2019ll be rewarded in allowing them to take you on another kind of journey, through the landscapes of our real, exploration-inviting, world.<\/span><\/p>\n I loved this country and I felt at home and where a man feels at home, outside of where he\u2019s born, is where he\u2019s meant to go. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Over the course of his decades-long writing career, Hemingway penned a number of non-fiction works, most of them falling into the travel genre. <\/span>Green Hills of Africa<\/span><\/i> chronicles his 1933 big game hunting excursion with his wife and friends. They hunt, they rest under the shade of a tree, they drink around a campfire at night, and repeat in the morning. There were numerous times where I had the thought that this is basically a non-fiction version of <\/span>The Sun Also Rises<\/span><\/i><\/a> \u2014 a good thing, in my book. <\/span><\/p>\n It reads like any Hemingway fiction does: it\u2019s like a letter from an old friend \u2014 the prose, while not ornate, is thoughtful and real and meaningful in its terseness. Scattered among the hunting tales are Hemingway\u2019s thoughts on writing and literature, on \u201cpursuit as happiness,\u201d and on the invigorating but sometimes infuriating nature of competition. <\/span><\/p>\n Though the safari-driven text may make some modern readers squeamish, Hemingway’s ethic towards hunting is, perhaps surprisingly, well-thought-out. Overall, it\u2019s a wonderful, virile book that\u2019s as worthy of reading as anything Hemingway penned. Though Papa complained about the bugs and the wet heat and the sting of failure, he found satisfaction in those things and made them appealing enough for modern readers to yearn for those same hard-earned and, ultimately, fulfilling experiences. <\/span><\/p>\n If you\u2019re looking for another look at 1930s Africa, <\/span>West With the Night<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Beryl Markham \u2014 the first female aviator to cross the Atlantic east to west \u2014 is also <\/span>very<\/span><\/i> good. <\/span><\/p>\n A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n You cannot chronicle American travel writing without mentioning at least one great road trip-inspired text. Kerouac\u2019s <\/span>On the Road<\/span><\/i><\/a> is what people often think of, but Steinbeck\u2019s slower-paced 1967 chronicle is better than Kerouac\u2019s frantic narrative. <\/span>Travels With Charley <\/span><\/i>blends the famous author\u2019s real cross-country adventure in his pickup truck (named Rocinante after Don Quixote\u2019s trusty steed) with some imaginative elements. Nonetheless, what\u2019s true is true, whether fictionalized or not. <\/span><\/p>\n Aging Steinbeck\u2019s intent was to re-find America \u2014 after writing for so long, he felt he had lost his sense of what the country was really like. From Maine, through the Midwest, out to Montana, along the Pacific coast, and down across the South, Steinbeck laments what our culture is losing as it urbanizes (he\u2019s terrified of freeways), but also recognizes that progress is ultimately a good thing. You can, in fact, both mourn the old ways and welcome\/accept the new. <\/span><\/p>\n Beyond that thread, which runs through the narrative, the reader gets beautiful passages about America\u2019s natural splendor (most memorably among the redwoods) and soul-stirring ideas about man\u2019s need for adventure and travel. Though it was only later found out that many of the book\u2019s conversations and details were fictionalized<\/a>, <\/span>Travels With Charley<\/span><\/i> remains a memorable and thought-provoking read. <\/span><\/p>\n Being alive, I want to see, and all the world is a bigger thing to see than one small town or valley. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n From his youth til his death, Jack London was a real-life adventurer<\/a>, and he often used his experiences as indirect grist for his famous, viscerally-engaging novels. But he also sometimes wrote directly about his escapades, as he does in <\/span>The Cruise of the Snark<\/span><\/i>, a series of sketches from the sailing voyage London and Charmian (his wife) hoped would take them all the way around the world. While various illnesses and tropical diseases cut the trip far short of that desire, it provided some great travel and adventure fodder nonetheless. <\/span><\/p>\n In a boat of their own design and with no navigational skills to speak of, Jack, Charmian, and a handful of others embarked from San Francisco, made it to Hawaii, and through much of the South Pacific before having to call it quits. In the pages of this adventure log, you\u2019ll find London\u2019s earnest but also lighthearted thoughts on the universal call of adventure, what it was like to learn navigation on the fly (or the sail, rather), taking up surfing in Hawaii, contracting disease in wild places, and plenty more. <\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019ll read it and no doubt feel the same call of adventure that London and Charmian did over 100 years ago. As Jack reflected when the idea for the voyage was first hatched: <\/span> \u201cWhy not start at once? We\u2019d never be younger, any of us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In his twenties, as Robert Louis Stevenson was trying to make a name for himself, the famed author of <\/span>Treasure Island<\/span><\/i> wrote a trio of travel narratives. His excursion through Spain on the back of a donkey is better known, but, for my money, it\u2019s <\/span>An Inland Voyage<\/span><\/i> \u2014 a chronicle of his canoe trip through Belgium and France \u2014 that\u2019s worthier of your attention. <\/span><\/p>\n In the 1870s, this sort of trip undertaken purely for pleasure was fairly unheard of, and Stevenson and his traveling pal, Walter, were often mistaken for peddlers. While the unusual excursion would spawn one of the first works of outdoor literature, the book doesn\u2019t in fact include many portraits of the natural world; as the route Robert and Walter decided upon took them through industrialized areas, the pair encountered more grimy factories than stunning vistas. But that suited what drew Stevenson\u2019s interest anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n Whereas the other writers on this list were engaging in a combination of anthropology, environmental writing, and sheer adventurism, Stevenson was far more interested in dissecting individuals, and he delighted in chronicling the great variety of human nature he found along the journey \u2014 both in terms of mapping the people he met and charting his own character. Because of that, the reader gets treated to a number of insightful ideas on what traveling can provide for our philosophy of life.<\/span><\/p>\n Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it solely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things can not be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one\u2019s lifetime.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Young Mark Twain was intrigued by the notice in the newspaper which advertised the very first vacation cruise in American history. He responded, put his reporting chops to good use, and the result became one of the most popular 19th century books in any genre, and one of the bestselling travel books of all-time. <\/span><\/p>\nGreen Hills of Africa<\/i><\/a> by Ernest Hemingway<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nTravels With Charley<\/i><\/a> by John Steinbeck <\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Cruise of the Snark<\/i><\/a> by Jack London <\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nAn Inland Voyage<\/i><\/a> by Robert Louis Stevenson <\/span><\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nThe Innocents Abroad<\/i><\/a> by Mark Twain <\/span><\/h3>\n
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