16 articles
Anna Leonowens
Anna Leonowens was an Indian-born British educator and writer whose memoirs of teaching at the Siamese court of King Mongkut from 1862 to 1867 inspired the musical The King and I.
Duff Gordon, Lucie, Lady
Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon (1821–1869) was a British travel writer and translator whose Letters from Egypt made her famous; she settled in Luxor, where Egyptians called her Sitt el Kebeer.
Eric Newby
Eric Newby (1919–2006) was an English travel writer, author of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush and The Last Grain Race, Observer travel editor 1964–73, wartime POW who married Wanda Skof.
Fernão Mendes Pinto
Fernão Mendes Pinto (c. 1509–1583) was a Portuguese adventurer and travel writer whose memoir Peregrinação recounts twenty-one years of travel, trade, and slavery in Asia.
Gavin Maxwell
Gavin Maxwell (1914–1969), Scottish naturalist and author of Ring of Bright Water (1960), the otter memoir that sold over two million copies; also SOE instructor and Soay basking shark fishery operator.
Lafcadio Hearn
Lafcadio Hearn (Koizumi Yakumo, 小泉八雲), 1850–1904, Greek-born writer of Irish-Greek parentage who worked as a journalist in Cincinnati, New Orleans, and Martinique, then settled in Japan, naturalized in 1896, and wrote Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan and Kwaidan.
Norman Lewis (writer)
Norman Lewis (1908–2003) was a British travel writer and novelist, author of A Dragon Apparent, Golden Earth, Naples '44 and The Honoured Society, and of the 1968 Sunday Times report Genocide in Brazil.
Richard Halliburton
Richard Halliburton (1900-1939), American travel writer and adventurer, author of The Royal Road to Romance; swam the Panama Canal for a 36-cent toll, flew the Flying Carpet around the world, and vanished in 1939 sailing the junk Sea Dragon from Hong Kong to San Francisco.
Robert Byron (travel writer)
Robert Byron (1905-1941), British travel writer and architectural historian, author of The Road to Oxiana (1937) about Persia and Afghanistan; distinguished from the poet Lord Byron; died when his ship was torpedoed in 1941.
Robyn Davidson
Robyn Davidson (born 1950) is an Australian writer, author of Tracks (1980) about her 1977 camel trek across 1,700 miles of Australian desert, and Unfinished Woman (2023), a memoir of her mother's suicide.
Simon Winchester
Simon Winchester, British-born journalist, geologist, and author of The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa, and Land; former Guardian and Sunday Times foreign correspondent, OBE 2006, living in New York.
Sophie Elmhirst
Sophie Elmhirst is a British journalist and author writing for the Guardian Long Read and The Economist. Winner of the 2020 Feature Writer of the Year award, her first book Maurice and Maralyn, also titled A Marriage at Sea, won the 2024 Nero Gold Prize.
Steven Callahan
Steven Callahan (born 1952), American sailor and naval architect, survived 76 days adrift in the Atlantic in 1982 after his sloop Napoleon Solo sank; author of Adrift and Life of Pi consultant.
Sylvain Tesson
Sylvain Tesson (born 1972, Paris) is a French travel writer and adventurer, son of journalist Philippe Tesson; Prix Médicis 2011 for Dans les forêts de Sibérie, Prix Renaudot 2019 for La Panthère des neiges, known for his 2015 walk across France after a near-fatal fall.
Tété-Michel Kpomassie
Tété-Michel Kpomassie, born in Togo in 1941, is a Togolese writer and explorer known for L'Africain du Groenland, the prize-winning account of his sixteen months living among Greenland's Inuit.
Vicente Pérez Rosales
Vicente Pérez Rosales (1807–1886) was a Chilean businessman, diplomat, and writer who organized the German colonization of the Llanquihue region and wrote the memoir Recuerdos del pasado.