About the Journal
In 1828, an Irishman recorded his return voyage home to Cork from a visit to Bombay. The journal covers the complete span of the 5-month journey with near-daily entries from the anonymous author. Lush landscapes, sea travel, rats, sharks, and meteors are just a few of the elements that the author experiences as he makes his harrowing journey home.
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This website hosts the first digital version of the text, with both the original text and a transcription for viewers. The material journal is housed in The Hill Memorial Library at Louisiana State University. Located in Special Collections, visitors can use the reading room to view the original manuscript by reserving it here.
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Travel Writing
This project was born out of an interest in travel writing and travel narratives. While it is common to view popular accounts that have been published from well-known authors, seldom do personal layman journals get viewed for historical edification on a large scale. This is the first of many projects that seeks to help add new voices to the travel writing genre for the use of interested parties and the conservation of old texts.
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While this digital version can never be the same as reading the original travel journal in person, it allows sharing of the information and narrative of the diary to anyone who has access to the internet. This new digital medium focuses on the experience of the voyage as told by the anonymous narrator, without the outside material elements of the original text. While an in-person reading of the manuscript would be desirable, the place created by this digital conversion allows a myriad of experiences in reading it outside of a reading room located at a university, allowing for more extensive review of the events in the journal.
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About the Project
The intention of this project is to create accessibility. The audiences most catered to with this digital remediation most likely include researchers interested in travel writing, animals in the 19th century, seafaring in the 19th century, and linguistic changes in the English language from the 19th century to now.
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This journal is a unique addition to the more popular editions of travel writing from this time period because it provides the point of view of an anonymous traveler, rather than someone known to be particularly political or well-known in some way. This allows for the focus to be on the personal experience of the author in this one journey, rather than the inevitable cross-over of outside subjects that comes with published journals.
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The main topics and issues addressed in this manuscript include:
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Space = the entire voyage takes place on a ship
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Climate = weather is central to the success and comfort of the journey
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Intercontinental Travel = accessibility between peoples in Europe and Asia during the 19th century​​
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Nature = animals, landscapes, and the ocean
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Interpersonal = interactions with friends and fellow travelers
Project Readings
The making of this project included ideas and inspirations from multiple essays and articles written by current and previous scholars in the fields of travel writing, ecologies, and historical narratives, including such works as The Ecological Other: Environmental Exclusion in American Culture by Sarah Jaquette Ray, The Archive and The Repertoire by Diana Taylor, and Reading these United States: Federal Literacy in the Early Republic, 1776-1830 by Keri Holt.
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This project was created as a remediation assignment for a graduate course at Louisiana State University. For further information on the journal or the project, contact Taylor via email at: ttho237@lsu.edu.