Narrative

7. Shipwreck narratives were immensely popular throughout the Romantic period and formed a specialized niche within the travel-writing genre. Frequently published in inexpensive forms, they were directed towards and available to a diverse audience. Their gripping stories of providential escape or lurid tragedy were sensationalist and/or didactic in tone, capitalizing on an appetite for horror while dispensing moral and religious instruction. The editor of the The Shipwreck of the Alceste (Dublin: White, 1831) is typical in his recommendation of shipwreck narratives as both entertaining and morally edifying.