The ‘long’ nineteenth century (1789–1914) inherited a rich tradition of travel writing, both narratives resulting from actual voyages and fictional works inspired by travel, including imaginary voyages and novels. The baron de Montesquieu's claim that human values and institutions are not universal, but rather are influenced by outside factors such as climate, placed new emphasis on travel to foreign lands. Through the identification of national ‘préjugés’ (‘false preconceptions’) travel writers fostered a sense of relativism, which challenged central political and religious authority. The French Revolution of 1789 was the culmination of this cultural shift, and the upheavals in the political and social status quo that it initiated continued to be felt throughout the following century in a series of ideological, social, and political aftershocks. This instability helped bring questions of individual and national identity to the forefront of private and public consciousness. In the cultural arena, the static worldview that subtended Classical values was likewise questioned. As a result, universality gave way to relativity, generality to the particular, the collectivity to the individual, the eternal to the momentary.

Classical literary tradition insisted upon the rigid separation of the ‘noble’ genres – tragedy, epic, and poetry – both from each other through the respect of immutable rules, and from prose genres perceived as being inferior. Writers with the new sensibility, however, sought discursive forms that allowed the free expression of individual sensations, thoughts and feelings.