A Guide to Collecting Travel and Exploration Books

Travel and exploration books record humanity’s encounters with the unknown — from the age of discovery voyages that mapped the globe to the polar expeditions that pushed into the last blank spaces on the map. As a collecting field, travel literature offers extraordinary range, from grand illustrated folios that sell for millions to twentieth-century adventure narratives available for $50.

Why Travel Books Are Collected

Historical significance. Exploration accounts are primary sources for world history. Cook’s voyages, Lewis and Clark’s journals, Darwin’s Beagle diary, Shackleton’s South — these books record transformative encounters between civilisations and with the natural world.

Illustrations. Many of the greatest illustrated books are travel or natural history titles. Expedition artists produced maps, charts, botanical illustrations, ethnographic studies, and landscape views that are works of art in their own right.

Maps. Travel books frequently contain maps — sometimes the earliest or most accurate maps of regions. Maps are collected both within and extracted from books.

Cross-collecting appeal. Travel books connect to dozens of other collecting fields: natural history, cartography, art, military history, ethnography, and regional history.

Key Collecting Areas

Voyages of Discovery (15th–18th Century)

The foundational texts of exploration literature:

Columbus, Vespucci, and the early printed accounts. The earliest printed accounts of the discovery of the Americas are among the rarest and most valuable books in existence.

Captain James Cook. Cook’s three Pacific voyages (1768–1779) produced some of the most important travel books ever published. The official accounts, with their botanical plates and charts, are cornerstones of any exploration collection. A complete set of first editions of the three voyages commands $50,000–$200,000+.

Alexander von Humboldt. Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions (1814–29) and the massive illustrated works from his South American expeditions.

Polar Exploration

A distinct and passionate collecting field:

Arctic exploration. The search for the Northwest Passage generated a rich literature: Parry, Franklin, McClure, Nansen, Peary. The Franklin Expedition (lost 1845) is the most written-about polar disaster.

Antarctic exploration. The “heroic age” (1895–1922) produced the genre’s most collectible titles:

• Shackleton, The Heart of the Antarctic (1909) and South (1919)
• Scott, The Voyage of the Discovery (1905) and Scott’s Last Expedition (1913)
• Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World (1922) — often called the greatest travel book ever written
• Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard (1915)

African Exploration

The nineteenth-century exploration of Africa generated bestselling narratives:

David Livingstone. Missionary Travels (1857) — one of the best-selling travel books of the Victorian era.

Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke. The search for the source of the Nile produced rival accounts and public controversy.

Henry Morton Stanley. How I Found Livingstone (1872), Through the Dark Continent (1878).

Mountaineering

Everest literature is a dedicated collecting niche:

• The Assault on Mount Everest, 1922 (Bruce, 1923)
• The Fight for Everest: 1924 (Norton, 1925)
• The Ascent of Everest (Hunt, 1953) — the first successful expedition
• Into Thin Air (Krakauer, 1997) — the modern classic

Modern Travel Writing

Twentieth and twenty-first-century travel writing is an accessible and growing collecting area:

Patrick Leigh Fermor. A Time of Gifts (1977), Between the Woods and the Water (1986). Fermor’s trilogy of walking across Europe is increasingly collected.

Bruce Chatwin. In Patagonia (1977), The Songlines (1987).

Eric Newby. A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush (1958).

Paul Theroux. The Great Railway Bazaar (1975), The Old Patagonian Express (1979).

Wilfred Thesiger. Arabian Sands (1959), The Marsh Arabs (1964). Thesiger’s accounts of vanished worlds are in strong demand.

What Drives Value

Illustrations and maps. Colour plates, folding maps, and scientific illustrations dramatically increase value. Books with hand-coloured plates or original engravings command the highest prices.

Completeness. Many travel books were issued with supplementary materials — atlas volumes, plate volumes, maps, appendices. A set is only complete with all parts.

Binding. Many exploration books were issued in distinctive bindings (cloth with gilt vignettes, pictorial boards). Original bindings in good condition are essential.

Association. Books from the library of an expedition member, or signed by the explorer, carry significant premiums.

Condition. Large-format illustrated books are particularly vulnerable to damage. Plates are sometimes removed for framing, foxing affects text and images differently, and bindings on heavy books wear quickly.

Travel and exploration collecting connects the collector with the great story of human curiosity — the drive to see what lies beyond the horizon.