Mornings in Mexico: A Short History of Travel Literature

Posted on July 9, 2019 Updated on August 9, 2019

By Lauren Maddox

In 1919, still recovering from a nearly fatal bout of influenza, D.H. Lawrence fled England. He had been staying in Derbyshire with his wife Freida, finishing “The Wintry Peacock” and hiding from authorities. The couple was destitute; his most famous novel The Rainbow had been banned on obscenity charges and the government was using the Defence of the Realm Act to openly, and often violently, harass Lawrence for his anti-militarism and Freida’s German heritage. Sick, and barred from publishing, Lawrence resolved to undertake his “savage pilgrimage.” His self-exile from England was funded by an ancient, and very British, literary tradition: travel literature.

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Despite these dire beginnings, Lawrence produced several gems during his travels: Twilight in Italy, Sea and Sardinia, Etruscan Places, and in 1927 Mornings in Mexico. The AGSL has a 1927 edition of Mornings in Mexico as well as a collection of travel writings from across time time and space, including dozens of travel books exploring Mexico and Latin America.

But the tradition of travel literature has existed as long as we have been traveling. Petrarch, climbing Mount Ventoux in 1336, accused his traveling companions of being frigida incuriositas–men with cold curiosity. The climb became a metaphor for Petrarch’s life, and he used his physical and visual experience of the landscape as a way to meditate on his own moral climb. UWM professor emeritus H. James Shey translated Petrarch’s Itinerarium, which outlines Petrarch’s proposed route for Giovanni Mandelli’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 1358. The Itinerarium focused primarily on the geography and path Mandelli would travel, but also included references to local history and Petrarch’s own spiritual experience as a pilgrim. The AGSL has a signed copy of Shey’s translation (which includes his own commentary on the Itinerarium) in the collection.

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Travel literature was a well-loved genre before tourism took hold as a social standard; travel literature became a way for people to explore new places that they would never travel to themselves. Travel writing has taken many different forms over the years– in the 2nd century, Pausanias wrote his Description of Greece as Greece was being incorporated into the Roman Empire. The books attempt to capture the glories of Greek culture even as it began to shift into obsolescence by dedicating entire books to describing specific cities and regions, their geography, architecture, and religion. This multi-volume 1898 edition was translated by J.G. Frazer— the AGS purchased it as first edition from Macmillan & Co. the year it was published.

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Travel writing continued to develop– travel diaries became popular during the Song Dynasty in China and Medieval Arabic literature. In the West, the genre became increasingly popular as exploration became a cultural priority; The Travels of Marco Polo transported readers to a great unknown East, Christopher Columbus’s journals became fascinating narratives of discovery, and maritime travelogues expanded the imaginations of the general population. But the tradition, especially in Europe, became steeped in colonialism.

In Mary Louise Pratt’s Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, she asks “how travel books written by Europeans about non-European parts of the world created the imperial order for Europeans “at home” and gave them their place in it.” Europe’s economic and political growth in the 18th century opened the door to imperialist ideals, and in time the colonization and exploitation of countries by Europe. Travel literature written by European authors became a way for Europeans at home to imagine their place in the Empire and imbued them with a sense of “ownership, entitlement and familiarity” that allowed them to idealize European expansion as a moral quest to spread civilization to “uncivilized” hinterlands beyond their own borders. Travel writers became the eyes through which Europeans viewed the rest of the world, complicating the role of travel writing in literature and the colonial to post-colonial world. The act of viewing and recording became a way for colonizing countries to express ownership over the “domestic subjects” being viewed and recorded.

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So, when Lawrence left England and wrote about his travels to feed himself during his “savage pilgrimage” and long exile, he joined a long tradition of Europeans who, voyeuristically, observed and recorded the countries beyond their own borders as a way to stake their claim. Even Lawrence, rejected by his England and forced to wander, couldn’t separate himself from a long tradition of literary Imperialism. But travel writing continues to thrive: travel guides, tourism blogs, journals and memoirs connect people to places they might be going or have never been. We still use travel literature as a way to reflect on our own lives, like Petrarch, to see beyond ourselves, and experience new places. Travel literature has a long, and sometimes detrimental, history– but, Lawrence assures us, “still, it is morning, and it is Mexico. The sun shines.”