The novel I am currently writing is The River of Fire, the third in my Mary Fox series, and it sees my Tudor-era heroine travelling from Norwich in eastern England, across the North Sea to The Hague in the Netherlands. From there she heads down through Germany and over the Swiss Alps to Milan. Her next stop is Florence, before she continues on to Naples. So the historical travel genre is very much front of mind for me at the moment – and it seemed a natural choice to write about other historical novels that feature travel as a theme. As this is a Link List, I have provided links for each book, using the closest Amazon.com version.

I have dismissed some obviously travel-themed books like Gulliver’s Travels and The Odyssey because they are pure fantasies, and not what I would consider ‘historical.’

I’ll start my journey with a question. What makes a historical novel ‘travel-themed’? Clearly there has to be movement of the main character from one historical location to another, but I would suggest that this must be integral to the plot, rather than incidental. Of course, there is one key feature that you need to make sure you’re reading a travel-themed novel – there’s a period map at the front!

So let us put our best foot forward and set off on our trip.

We’ll start with Saltblood by Francesca De Tores. This follows the travels of Mary Read from Plymouth at the end of the 17th century to Nassau in the Bahamas. For much of her journey she dresses as a man and calls herself ‘Mark’. On the way she becomes a footman in a grand house, serves in the navy, runs a tavern in Flanders, and finally becomes one of very few female pirates. As someone who has the sea in her blood, Mary is always seeking the freedom of the open water, and the experiences of new places.

In The Cloister and the Hearth by Charles Reade (1861), Gerard Eliasson sets off on a journey from Holland to Rome, while his wife Margaret gives birth to his son, Erasmus – who later achieved fame as the great Catholic scholar and humanist. Gerard is told his wife had died, so he becomes a monk and travels around Europe as a preacher. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle loved this book, especially for its ‘minute detail giving the feeling of daily life in the 1500s, from a clean Dutch home to a slovenly medieval German Inn to conflicted pre-Renaissance Rome.’

I read V.E.H Masters’s book The Apostates in draft before publication, and enjoyed it enormously. It tells the story of Mainard and Bethia, who flee Antwerp in 1550 before the Inquisition can catch them. Their travels take them across Europe, as they try to reach the safety (for them) of Venice. In Geneva, Bethia meets the famous revolutionary protestant preacher Calvin – and it’s always interesting to see how real people are woven into a fictional historical narrative.

The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London, chronicles the adventures of a domesticated dog called Buck, as he travels into the wilds of the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. Buck’s journey starts in California and takes him up to Alaska and northwestern Canada, before he finally succumbs to the ‘call of the wild’.

Of course, no article such as this would be complete without mention of The Canterbury Tales (1387-1400) by Geoffrey Chaucer. When thirty pilgrims gather at the Tabard Inn at Southwark, they are challenged to a story-telling contest as they travel. The tales of the various pilgrims have become part of the literary landscape. The stories told by the Knight, the Monk, the Merchant, the Miller, and many others, have been told and retold in many forms over the centuries.

There are plenty more books that fit the genre. What others can you suggest? Please put them in the comments.

Meanwhile, I am enjoying sending Mary Fox down through the Italian peninsula. As I write, she is just about to leave Florence for the final leg of her trip to Pozzuoli near Naples. I feel a period map coming on…