The Literature of Domestic Travel in Early Modern England: The Journeys of John Taylor

In early modern England, to ‘travel’ typically meant to leave the nation's shores. Yet acts of domestic travel were far more numerous and, arguably, more significant to the social and cultural history of the nation. What, then, did domestic travel mean in this period? And why is it so strangely erased from literary records? This essay, drawn from a larger ongoing study of literature and domestic travel in early modern England, focuses on the efforts of one man, John Taylor, to turn travel into texts. It argues that these texts, which narrate a series of unusual journeys Taylor undertook in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, mark a pivotal moment in the literary history of domestic travel. Taylor confronts prevailing discourses which positioned the mobile commoner as a rogue or vagabond, countering with powerful representations of the laborious and important business of travel. He perceives that quotidian acts of travel, which his journeys mirror in distorted yet curious ways, are fundamental to the political structure and economic development of his nation.