The meaning and making of missionary travels: the sedentary and itinerant discourses of a victorian bestseller

Livingstone, J. (2011) The meaning and making of missionary travels: the sedentary and itinerant discourses of a victorian bestseller. Studies in Travel Writing, 15(3), pp. 267-292. (doi: 10.1080/13645145.2011.595929)

Abstract

David Livingstone, the nineteenth-century missionary explorer, became the posthumous subject of what J.M. Mackenzie has called a ‘biographical industry’. To this we might add that he continues to sustain something of an academic industry today. Despite this continued attention, however, there has been very little sustained analysis of Livingstone’s bestseller Missionary Travels (1857). Furthermore, the original handwritten manuscript that preceded the publication has received even less, if any, critical attention. By closely scrutinising the final version of Missionary Travels, and highlighting passages in the manuscript that were excised for publication, this article aims to contribute to the persistent debate over Livingstone’s relation to empire. It probes the extent to which Missionary Travels extends imperialist discourse, opening up the sheer complexity of this question by a close reading of the text. In its published format Missionary Travels is an ambiguous book with competing impulses that problematise its simple categorisation as unequivocally imperialist. Yet this ambivalence was clearer at an earlier stage of production since the text was originally envisaged as something much more radical. It was, however, subjected to an extensive process of censorship in which much provocative material was expunged before being offered to the British public.

• Item Type: Articles
• Keywords: David Livingstone; travel writing; imperialism; ambivalence; discourse; missionary
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Livingstone, Dr Justin
• Authors: Livingstone, J.
• Subjects: D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General); P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism; P Language and Literature > PR English literature
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies > English Literature
• Journal Name: Studies in Travel Writing
• ISSN: 1364-5145
• ISSN (Online): 1755-7550
• Published Online: 03 August 2012