Narrative

4. Due to its educational quality, the travelogue genre was frequently endorsed as appropriate for ostensibly ‘impressionable’ readers such as women and children. Travel literature specifically geared towards a juvenile audience became more common as the market for children’s literature expanded in the nineteenth century. Authors of these texts often gleaned material from published travelogues and summarized the information for a juvenile audience. This form was frequently didactic rather than playful in tone, imparting information about the world in a manner that instilled patriotism and Protestant values. For example, in Isaac Taylor’s Scenes in Asia (London: Harris, 1826), the author advocates the accumulation of knowledge—instructing his young readers to “read with attention,—desire to improve” (vi)—while promoting nationalist sentiment through his emphasis on the safety and overall superiority of Britain.