Illusion and disillusionment : travel writing in the modern age / edited by Roberta Micallef.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction / Roberta Micallef -- Desire, truth, and propaganda: Lay and ecclesiastical travellers from Europe to China in the long eighteenth century / Eugenio Menegon -- Travel, adventure, and self-fashioning: A Frenchman's journey to New Orleans in 1729 / Elizabeth C. Goldsmith -- Gothic fiction, the Grand Tour, and the seductions of antiquity: Polidori's The Vampyre (1919) / James Uden -- The Chameleonic identities of Mohan Lal Kashmari and his travels in Persianate lands / Sunil Sharma -- Fellow travellers? Two Arab study abroad narratives of Moscow / Margaret Litvin -- Imaginary travels: Halide Edib's illusory encounters with India / Roberta Micallef -- A glimpse of the American west: A French schoolteacher's 1893 pioneering adventure / Mary Beth Raycroft -- The travels of a Japanese "girl": Yoshiya Nobuko's 1928-29 World tour / Sarah Frederick.

"Illusion and Disillusionment: Travel Writing in the Modern Age seeks to understand, expand, and challenge the boundaries of the modern travelogue across several literary traditions. Through an engaging cast of characters—China-bound missionaries, an Indo-Persian diplomat, a Turkish exile in India, a French schoolteacher touring America, Arab students in Moscow, a Japanese woman writer in Europe—this volume extends the study of travel writing beyond the frameworks of colonialism, imperialism, and Orientalism, focusing on the experience of travel itself."--Publisher's website.