Books and Travel

This small volume looks at books, ideas of travel, and travel from the perspective of domestic tourism. The authors are the UK-based co-convenors of the biennial International Tourism and Media Studies Conferences. They wonder how reading about travel affects people's actual experiences of travel or vision of real places. Much of the book consists of categorizing travel themes in books, followed by retellings of the plots of many books. Most are genre fiction dealing with a journey from England to elsewhere, or an imagined elsewhere in England. The book's primary focus is on fantasy novels, and largely avoids common European and US travel fantasies of exotic real-world places; the focus is on people and places that could be theme park-style destinations without causing much offense, so non-Western settings remain out of view. The authors are strongly influenced by Joseph Campbell's idea of the Hero's Journey, considered as a universal myth. They synopsize stories that have inspired English and US tourist interest in European and US people and destinations, both real (home of the Bronte sisters, Baker Street, Deadwood, South Dakota) and constructed (Peter Pan and Harry Potter theme destinations, "Dracula's" castle). Distributed in the US by UTP Distribution. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Jennifer Laing is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism and Events at Monash University and Warwick Frost is an Associate Professor in Tourism and coordinator of the Events programs at La Trobe University. Their joint research interests include heritage, events, travel narratives, and the interaction between media, popular culture and tourism. They are co-convenors of the biennial International Tourism and Media Conferences.