I had almost forgotten that back in 1980 people still wrote books like this - flamboyant prose style and page long slabs of personal opinion in between actual literary criticism. The book is quite entertaining though, and at its best makes the interesting point that 'going South' to the beaches and parasols of the Med, to shed clothes and have affairs and worship the sun, was for the British between the wars a kind of pastoral idyll, replacing the pastoral idylls of bleating flocks on English sward and babbling brooks beneath venerable elms (from an earlier time when the British didn't travel as much). Unlike much literary criticism these days Paul Fussell is actually grateful and appreciative of good quality travel writing, and literature in general, and expresses his enthusiasms in this book (he also complains about modern tourism in an understandable but somewhat ploddingly predictable manner). The book is worth reading as an entertaining survey of some of the best travel writing ever written.

When Fussell sinks his teeth into a major figure of the era -- Robert Byron, for instance -- he's very good. But other parts of the book are just whiny complaining about how modern-day tourism isn't the same. (This is one part of the book which seemed very dated to me, as the travel genre is alive and thriving, as far as I know.) ( )

This books deals with the significance of the development English (not American, not European) travel writing between the first and second world wars, covering the work of authors such as Peter Fleming, DH Lawrence, Robert Byron and Evelyn Waugh.
Fussell draws a picture of people who were essentially misfits who sought to escape the straitjacket of middle class English life by going travelling to that mystic place 'abroad' where irregular, deviant, or just plain odd behaviour was better tolerated, and in the process of which created some of the classic works of the ninteen twenties and thirties. Fussell also discusses the decline of the genre after the second world war ( )

I found this book superb, and a great introduction to some of the older travel writers -- people that pioneered the genre. Fussell clearly loves travel writing and eccentric people, and he tells their stories with unfettered delight.

Both accessible and smart, Abroad is a great introduction to the travelogue category, and a great way to get quickly acquainted with some of its best writers. ( )