The fact that there are rarely more than a handful of texts catalogued under the Library of Congress subject heading ‘Voyages, Imaginary’ in major libraries around the world is not, as it may seem, evidence that relatively few imaginary voyages or works relating to imaginary voyages now exist to be catalogued, although many texts are now rare. Rather, it indicates an anomaly in classification and a lack of interest in the literary form as a recognizable genre. Even when the imaginary voyage has been thought of as a distinct genre, literary critics and historians have tended to marginalize or overlook it on the grounds that these texts had limited truth value when compared with genuine travel accounts. On this basis, imaginary voyages have been seen as fanciful accompaniments to documentary accounts of travel, and as displaced by them. Apart from interest in several well-known works, a small number of critical studies and a general acknowledgement in library classification schemes, the literary form has been largely forgotten, along with hundreds of lesser-known examples. Ironically, the prominence of the iconic eighteenth-century imaginary voyages, Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels, has drawn attention away from other works.