The Art of the Travel Essay
EGL 145, Winter 2007
Jonah Willihnganz
Stanford University

"The possibility that illumination will come to your mind straight from personal experience is about as likely as that a boy will show slick basketball moves without having watched or played with older boys in some playground. . . You begin, after all, with what your taste and intelligence and experience will permit you to begin with."
                                                                                                                  —Wallace Stegner

Muti-Author Essay Collections with Good Introductions to the Essay Form

Lopate, Phillip. The Art of the Personal Essay. Anchor Books, 1975.
A popular collection of essays of every kind, with an intelligent introduction.

Atwan, Robert. The Best American Essays. Houghton Mifflin, annually 1986-present.
Each year a different essayist edits the collection. 2002 was a particularly good year, with Stephen Jay Gould editing, and every year's editor waxes on the nature of the essay (e.g,. Cynthia Ozick, Tracy Kidder, Susan Sontag, Gay Talese, Annie Dillard). See also in the series The Best American Essays of the Century, edited by Joyce Carol Oates.

Gross, John. The Oxford Book of Essays. Oxford UP, 1992.
A large selection of essays with a short, opinionated (and very English) introduction. The 18th century selections are particularly good.

Epstein, Joseph. The Norton Book of Personal Essays. WW Norton, 1997.
Fifty or so essays from the 20th century, chosen by Epestein. A good if relatively breezy introduction to the popular "personal" essay.

Albert and Maclin Guerard, John Hawkes, & Claire Rosenfield. eds. The Personal Voice. J. Lippincott Co. 1964.
A nice survey of creative non-fiction styles with good little introductions to authors and their work.  Like many great collections of this kind, it is out of print so try used bookstores. Dozens of excerpts and complete essays that reflect a taste for the 19th and early 20th century—Darwin, Stendhal, Mencken, Auden, Honig, Agee, Stegner, Baldwin, Gide, Thoreau, Hardy, and many others.

Single-Author Essay Collections

Students often ask if I could recommend collections of essays by a single author.  I can, though of course with the usual caveats: I am young in the world and have read but a little of its treasures, I like pieces about ketchup, etc.

Abbey, Edward. The Best of Edward Abbey. San Francisco: Sierra Club, 1988.
Atwood, Margaret. Second Words. University of Toronto Press, 1982.
Atwood, Margaret, Negotiating with the Dead. London: Cambridge UP, 2002.
Auden, W.H. A Certain World. New York: Viking, 1970.
Beerbohm, Max. Works and More. London: John Lane The Bodley Head, 1952.
Berry, Wendell. What are People For? San Francisco: North Point, 1990.
Chesterton, G.K. Alarms and Discursions. Kessinger, 2004.
Didion, Joan. Essays and Conversations. Princeton, NJ: Ontario Review Press, 1984.
Didion, Joan. Slouching Towards Bethlehem. New York: Dell, 1968.
Didion, Joan. The White Album. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Bantam, 1975.
Dillard, Annie. Teaching a Stone to Talk. New York: Harper & Row, 1982.
Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
Ehrlich, Gretel. The Solace of Open Spaces. New York: Penguin, 1985.
Eiseley, Loren. All the Strange Hours. New York: Scribner's, 1975.
Eiseley, Loren. The Unexpected Universe. New York: Harcourt, 1969.
Elkin, Stanley. Pieces of Soap. Simon and Schuster, 1992.
Gopnik, Adam. Paris to the Moon. New York: Random House, 2001.
Gould, Stephen Jay. The Flamingo's Smile. New York: WW Norton, 1985.
Gould, Stephen Jay. Wonderful Life. New York: Norton, 1989.
Grey, Spaulding. Swimming to Cambodia. New York: Theatre Community., 1985.
Hoagland, Edward. The Courage of Turtles. New York: Random House, 1996.
Huxley, Aldous. Collected Essays of Aldous Huxley. New York: Harper and Row, 1956.
Kittredge, William. Owning it All. St. Paul: Graywolf, 1987.
Lamb, Charles. The Essays of Elia. Ed. Ernest Rhys. London: J.M. Dent, 1906.
Lopez, Barry. Arctic Dreams. New York: Scribner's, 1986.
Lopez, Barry. Crossing Open Ground. New York: Vintage, 1989.
McCarthy, Mary. Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1957.
McPhee, John. The Curve of Binding Energy. New York: FSG, 1974.
McPhee, John. The John McPhee Reader. New York: FSG, 1976.
McPhee, John.. Oranges. New York: FSG, 1967.
McPhee, John. Rising from the Plains. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1986.
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de. The Complete Works: Essays, Journals, Letters. New York: Everyman's Library, 2003.
Orwell, George. Collected Essays. London: Secker and Warburg, 1961.
Ozick, Cynthia. Metaphor and Memory. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Pollan, Michael. Second Nature. Publishing Group West, 1991.
Percy, Walker. Signposts in a Strange Land. New York: Picador, 2001.
Quammen, David. The Flight of the Iguana. New York: Scrbners, 1998.
Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo. New York: Scrbners, 1996.
Rich, Adrienne. What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics. New York: Norton, 2003.
Rich, Adrienne. Arts of the Possible. New York: Norton 2001.
Sanders, Scott Russell. The Paradise of Bombs. Boston: Beacon, 1987.
Sanders, Scott Russell. Secrets of the Universe: Scenes from the Journey Home. Boston: Beacon, 1991.
Selzer, Richard. Confessions of a Knife. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979.
Soto, Gary. The Effects of Knut Hamsun on a Fresno Boy. New York, Persea, 2001.
Stegner, Wallace. Marking the Sparrow's Fall. New York: Henry Holt, 1998.
Thackeray, William. Roundabout Papers. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1899.
Thomas, Lewis. The Youngest Science. New York: Bantam, 1984.
Thompson, Hunter S. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New York: Vintage Books, 1989.
Thurber, James. My Life and Hard Times. New York: Harper and Row, 1933.
Updike, John. Odd Jobs. New York: Knopf, 1991.
White, E.B. Essays of E.B. White. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
Walker, Alice. Living by the Word. New York: Harvest, 1989.
Woolf, Virginia. Collected Essays. London: Hogarth, 1966.