The presence of the past: the uses of history in Tasmanian travel writing

Travelling the sequestered Isle: Tasmania as penitentiary, laboratory and sanctuary

“…In the twentieth century, travel writing is marked by certain transformations. In the early twentieth century, as Richard White (2016) and Robyn Greaves (2016) point out in their essays in this collection, travel writing was viewed as a "middle brow" cultural activity with a close relationship to the burgeoning economies of tourism. When it comes to the kind of books by authors who "travel in order to write" or by those with established profiles in the literary world, Tasmania was in a sense short-changed because of its position on a geographical and economic periphery.…”

“…Tasmania's reputation as a penal colony survived local efforts to reinvent its origins, and a thriving tourist economy based around the convict past has existed since the latter third of the nineteenth century (see White 2016, in this volume for the ongoing interest in historical tourism). Mark Twain, Anthony Trollope, Marcus Clarke and many other travellers were interested in reporting the remnants of the convict system.…”