Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History

Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History is a collection of digitized manuscripts, diaries, travel journals, correspondence, photographs, postcards, and ephemera created by American women travelers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their narratives offer firsthand accounts of major historical events and their perceptions women’s lives and cultures around the world. Some of the topics covered include:

• Emigration and daily life
• Missionary work
• World War I
• World War II
• Boxer War in China
• Frontier Life in America
• Personal enlightenment through travel
• Education and finishing school
• Sightseeing, holidays, and tourism
• Customs, culture and leisure

The collection also includes maps, a slideshow gallery of images from the collection, essays, finding aids to the original physical collections, and a chronology. The original materials are held by the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.