In the spring of 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, accompanied by Jefferson’s enslaved chef James Hemings, took a road trip. In six weeks, they covered more than 900 miles, travelling through New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut ...
In the spring of 1791, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, accompanied by Jefferson’s enslaved chef James Hemings, took a road trip. In six weeks, they covered more than 900 miles, travelling through New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut before returning across Long Island. Suffering from various physical ailments and exhausted by the political travails of the day, they sought “health, recreation, and curiosity.” Madison said as long as they were together they could “never be out of their way.” Decades later, he recalled that the trip made them “immediate companions.”
Few rites of passage are as venerated in American culture as the road trip, the journey of discovery to places unfamiliar or unknown. Here are ten noteworthy ones in literature and film in chronological order:
1. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Mark Twain knew about travel! In his famous novel, we follow Huck and Jim as they stream down the Mississippi in a biracial journey of discovery and escape. The trip gets a bit complicated in the novel’s third act, but, on the journey, they prove their manhood and confess their feelings for one another. Jim discovers he is free and Huck realizes the road is the only place for him. At the end, Huck continues his travels as he lights out for the Territory.
2. It Happened One Night (1934)
In this classic screwball comedy, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert find themselves together on a bus heading to New York from Florida. They hitchhike and encounter all kinds of difficulties as they fall in love, even though Colbert is married to a charlatan. Of course, they end up together. The film swept the key Academy Awards categories̶—and it did something else. In one scene, Clark Gable takes off his shirt to reveal he is wearing nothing beneath it. As a result, T-shirt sales in America plummeted.
3. The Grapes of Wrath (book 1939; film 1940)
In John Steinbeck’s stirring novel, the Joad family, victims of the dust bowl and ruthless bankers, are forced to flee their Oklahoma home and head to California. They travel along the legendary Route 66, where they experience cruelty and kindness as they make their way to what they think will be the promised land. Unfortunately, it isn’t paradise, and at the end Tom Joad commits himself to forever travelling the country and serving as an agent of justice. “I’ll be everywhere,” he states.
4. On The Road (1957)
Jack Kerouac’s novel is the one everyone thinks of when it comes to road trips. Much of the book focuses on the travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty. It is a tale of friendship and discovery, written in a stream of consciousness that matches the improvisational genius of jazz, which is a current that runs through the book. The novel has influenced generations of creative artists. Paradise says it best: “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
5. Travels with Charley: In Search of America (1962)
John Steinbeck makes this list twice. In 1960, aging and feeling that he had lost the feel for America, he embarked on a 10,000-mile journey across the nation, accompanied by his French poodle Charley. Part travelogue, part fiction, he wrote about the people he met. He gloried in the gifts of nature at Yellowstone and agonized over scenes of racial violence in New Orleans. In the end, he was uncertain what he found, and he lamented the loss of an older America. “The more I inspected this American image, the less sure I became of what it is.”
6. Easy Rider (1969)
The film follows Captain America (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) as they travel by motorcycle from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The pair sold cocaine to finance their trip, and drugs, from marijuana to LSD, are part of their journey. In their travels, they experience life in a commune and befriend a lawyer (Jack Nicholson). But they face hostility (the lawyer is murdered) and, in the end, they are also killed. The movie defined an era where the rebellion of youth came to the forefront and the soundtrack forever linked rock ‘n’ roll to the journey on the road.
7. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)
Robert Pirsig’s book became a surprise bestseller, despite being rejected initially by dozens of publishers. It tells the fictionalized autobiographical story of a motorcycle trip he took with his son from Minnesota to California. Along the way, the narrative contemplates various philosophical and psychological issues. What the travelers found was inward, not outward. “Sometimes,” Pirsig writes, “it’s a little better to travel than arrive.”
8. Rain Man (1988)
Awkward pairings are elemental in road narratives. Few are as different as the brothers Charlie and Ray, portrayed by Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman. One is an upscale collectibles dealer and the other is an institutionalized autistic savant. On their car journey from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, Charlie copes with the regimented habits of his brother and comes to appreciate and understand him. In Las Vegas, Ray uses his mathematical abilities to count cards and win big at blackjack. In the end, Ray returns to the institution where he lives, and Charlie promises to see him again, having come to appreciate his brother and realize he wants him in his life.
9. Thelma and Louise (1991)
What starts as a girls’ weekend away becomes a one-way road trip to eternity. Geena Davis (Thelma) and Susan Sarandon (Louise), looking to escape from a domineering husband and deadening job, plan a weekend at a cabin. But after a stop at a roadhouse where Thelma is nearly raped and Louise kills her attacker, the women go on the lam. Along the way, their friendship and confidence grow, but they reach a point of no return as authorities bear down on them. They gas the engine and head toward a gorge. The film leaves the two of them in still frame, forever suspended in mid-air, pointed upward, out and away.
10. The Road (2006)
In this famous post-apocalyptic work, Cormac McCarthy tells the story of a loving father and his young son journeying across a forbidding landscape. There is danger and horror everywhere and the pair struggle to survive. They strive to reach water, and do. But the father dies and the son is left to carry on with another family, who discover him. Father and son had “set out along the blacktop in the gunmetal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire.” If each is the other’s world entire, it matters not where you are on the road.
Dive into ten remarkable books that illuminate the diverse and vibrant experiences of the LGBTQ+ community. From historical explorations that uncover the rich tapestry of LGBTQ+ history to biographies of influential musical figures who have shaped the cultural landscape, these books offer invaluable perspectives. Whether you’re looking to educate yourself, find inspiration, or simply enjoy compelling stories, these books are essential reads that honor and uplift LGBTQ+ voices.
Choosing Love: What LGBTQ+ Christians Can Teach Us All About Relationships, Inclusion, and Justice
What does the battle between conservative Christians and LGBTQ+ people look like from the vantage point of those who are both? Choosing Love brings together LGBTQ+ conservative Christian experiences with insights from civil rights thinkers, Black feminism, and queer thinkers of color.
Learn more about Choosing Love by Dawne Moon and Theresa W. Tobin
On Elton John: An Opinionated Guide
A lively and imaginative exploration of the career and music of the Rocket Man. Elton John is not only “still standing,” he is a living superlative, the ultimate record-breaking, award-winning survivor of the great era of pop and rock music that he helped to shape during his six decades in the music industry.
The Dandy: A People’s History of Sartorial Splendour
The Dandy: A People’s History of Sartorial Splendour constitutes the first ever history of those dandies who emanated from the less privileged layers of the populace—the lowly clerks, shop assistants, domestic servants, and labourers who increasingly emerged as style-conscious men about town during the modern age. Discover the hidden history of the transgender dandy in interwar Paris and Berlin, the zoot suiter, the teddy boy, the New Romantic, and the many colourful dandies from the past that continue to influence us today.
In the prize-winning The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. This year marks the 100th anniversary of The New Negro. What better way to celebrate than by learning more about the life of Alain Locke, the man who popularized the term.
Learn more about The New Negro by Jeffrey C. Stewart
The Things She Carried: A Cultural History of the Purse in America
The Things She Carried explores how purses have served as more than fashion accessories—they’ve been symbols of privacy, pride, and activism. Kathleen B. Casey examines their role in breaking social barriers, from Black women in the civil rights movement to LGBTQ+ individuals using bags to defend their bodies and as declarations of identity. This powerful history highlights how everyday objects can become tools for resistance and self-expression, making it a compelling read for Pride Month and beyond.
Colette was a pioneering, ground-breaking modernist writer, but has not always had her originality and worth recognized in Britain. Her work provocatively uses unstable narratives, gaps, silences, fairytale, mythical tropes, and sensual evocations of childhood, sex, and landscapes. Michèle Roberts examines how Colette expresses her unsettling content on desire, perversion, ageing, and different forms of love.
James Baldwin’s work remains profoundly relevant, offering a lens into the intersections of race, sexuality, and identity. His fiction explores personal dilemmas amid complex social pressures, as seen in Giovanni’s Room, which centers gay and bisexual experiences, and Sonny’s Blues, where music becomes a metaphor for resilience. Tom Jenks’s analysis of Sonny’s Blues highlights Baldwin’s meticulous storytelling, showing how the narrative stays with readers. Baldwin’s exploration of masculinity, race, and class challenged norms and shaped conversations around LGBTQ+ rights, making his work essential reading.
Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750
Until quite recently, the history of male-male sexual relations was a taboo topic. But when historians eventually explored the archives of Florence, Venice and elsewhere in Europe, they brought to light an extraordinary world of early modern sexual activity, extending from city streets and gardens to taverns, monasteries and Mediterranean galleys.
The Well of Loneliness is among the most famous banned books in history. A pioneering work of literature, Radclyffe Hall’s novel charts the development of a ‘female sexual invert’, Stephen Gordon, who from childhood feels an innate sense of masculinity and desire for women.
Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass stands as one of the most influential and innovative literary works of the last two hundred years. Widely credited as the originator of free verse in English, Whitman put forward a radical new language of the body, the nation, and same-sex love.
Benjamin Franklin left many anecdotes about his reading in his autobiography and other writings. Though he presents himself as an example of how reading can enrich a person’s life, he never really codified his personal reading as how-to advice, but that does not mean that I cannot do so. Therefore, in Undaunted Mind: The Intellectual Life of Benjamin Franklin, I discuss many aspects of Franklin’s reading life: what he read, where he read, how he read, and why he read. What follows is a set of practical tips derived from Franklin’s experience to get the most from your reading.
1. Take advantage of spare moments.
Reading about vegetarianism in Thomas Tryon’s Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness when he was an apprentice in Boston under his brother James, Benjamin Franklin convinced himself that he could prepare cheaper and healthier meals than James and his other employees took at the local tavern. When they went to lunch, Franklin stayed behind in the printshop, enjoyed his solo lunch, and spent the spare hour reading. He used the money he saved on meals to buy more books: the mark of a true bookman. In a life jampacked with activity to benefit the community and the nation, Franklin would apply what he learned as an apprentice: he always took advantage of whatever spare moments he could to enjoy reading.
2. Keep an open mind about unusual ideas.
One book he read as an apprentice was Philemon Holland’s English translation of Pliny’s Natural History, a landmark in Franklin’s reading life. He laughed at Pliny’s account of a practice among the seamen of his time to still the waves in a storm by pouring oil into the sea, which Franklin considered a silly superstition. When he learned decades later that oil could indeed calm bodies of water, Franklin felt embarrassed by how readily he had rejected this Plinyism without careful consideration. It took a long time to learn, but he eventually realized that readers must not dismiss ideas from different times, lands, or cultures.
3. Talk about books with others.
Here is something nonreaders never realize: people’s conversation reflects their reading. Franklin learned this lesson after he had run away from Boston. Passing through New Jersey, he encountered a surgeon and poet named John Browne, who could tell by the way the teenaged Franklin talked that he was an avid reader. Their shared love of literature formed the basis for their lifelong friendship. Once Franklin settled in Philadelphia, he befriended other young men who loved to read. Eventually, he and his friends formed a mutual improvement club they called the Junto, and, as in a modern-day book club, book discussions became a prominent feature of their weekly meetings.
4. Assemble your own home library.
The Junto members each had a personal library, but Franklin got the idea for them to combine their collections to form a library greater than any of them could assemble individually. The communal library did not work, but it would lead to the formation of the Library Company of Philadelphia, the first subscription library in North America. Though the Library Company was a great resource for its subscribers, Franklin still recognized the importance for them to have home libraries of their own, which would provide ready references in the case of practical works and a never-ending source of entertainment, which a good collection of poetry, essays, and plays could provide.
5. Share your books with others.
Sir Richard Steele’s Dramatic Works was one book of plays Franklin had in his personal library, at least until he loaned it to a friend, who never returned it. More than most possessions, books are notoriously difficult things to return. Franklin told his friend Benjamin Rush “that a man lost ten percent on the value, by lending his books, [and] that he once knew a man who never returned a borrowed book, because no one ever returned books borrowed from him.” Despite the unreturned books, Franklin continued to loan volumes from his library to friends throughout his life. He decided that the opportunity to share the ideas they contained was worth the risk.
We have recently published five new blog posts on Electronic Enlightenment. These blogs cover a range of insightful topics and will be linked through our announcement newsletter, offering fresh insights and valuable information to you.
Each blog is crafted to enlighten and engage, providing you with information and discussions on the history of the Barham Family, Charles Bertram, William Stukeley, Phillis Wheatley Peters, and the history of slavery through the letters of well-known historical figures. Check out the excerpts below and read the full blog posts and more on Electronic Enlightenment.
“The Plantation Papers of the Barham Family” by Tessa van Wijk
After the survey of 300 letters and some legal papers, the 16 letters for this mini-edition were chosen to represent seven themes relating to the management of the sugar plantations and, specifically, the enslaved workers. The seven themes present in these letters are the following: (1) providing for enslaved people, (2) efficiency and purchasing of enslaved workers, (3) punishment and reward of enslaved workers, (4) enslaved workers rebelling, revolting and/or running away, (5) pregnancy, birth, and enslaved children, (6) illness & health of enslaved workers, and, lastly, (7) (anti-)slavery debate and sentiment….
Several of the 16 letters from the Barham Papers’ Jamaica Correspondence added to Electronic Enlightenment can tell us about the health and well-being of the enslaved people working on the Mesopotamia Estate and Island Estate….
These letters also shed light on important political developments at the time. Specifically, when it comes to the rise of anti-slavery sentiment, abolition, and the unstable political situation in European colonies.
“Colonial Myth-making and Anti-Scottish Sentiment in Charles Bertram’s Letters to William Stukeley” by Sophie Dickson
Charles Bertram urged William Stukeley to forgive his faults. These faults, he admitted, were his undying love for antiquities and his rude intrusion into Stukeley’s acquaintance. However, Bertram’s interruption of Stukeley’s professional and social circle birthed a collection of 32 letters spanning from 1746 to 1764, later collated by Stukeley. Early in their communication, Bertram revealed the spectacular discovery of what he claims were fifteenth-century manuscript fragments written by a “Ricardi Monachi Westmonasteriensis.” The manuscript detailed lost geographical information of Roman Britain, assembled from various contemporary Roman sources such as Beda, Orosius, Pliny, and Ptolemy. Through their correspondence, Bertram gradually shared fragments of the manuscript with Stukeley until its publication in 1757 as De Situ Britanniae(The Description of Britain).
“Epistolary Form in the Letters from Charles Bertram to William Stukeley” by Olivia Flynn
Using the collection of 32 letters written by the literary forger Charles Julius Bertram to the Antiquarian William Stukeley between 1747 and 1763 as a case study, Flynn explores the different sub-genres of letters. The purpose and subject matter of letters of the eighteenth century vary greatly, according to the purpose and style of the letter. They included the consolation letter, familial letters, business letters, petitions, political missives, public letters to newspapers and periodicals, and, of course, love letters.
This blog post focuses on the introductory letter and the often overlooked medical diagnosis letter.
“Slavery in the Electronic Enlightenment Collection” by Tessa van Wijk
According to Jean Le Rond d’Alembert to Voltaire [François Marie Arouet], 14 April 1760, the metaphorical use of terms such as ‘esclavage’ and ‘esclave’ is typical of eighteenth-century French authors. The connotation with the enslavement of African people or the Triangular Slave Trade was a lot less frequently present. Rather, the words ‘esclave’ and ‘esclavage’ are more often defined in opposition to freedom and liberty: “A slave, for the eighteenth century, is someone who was deprived of their freedom, whatever the form or cause of this deprivation”….
The top five letter writers with the most letters in the final list of results are Simon Taylor (57), Edmund Pendleton (42), William Cowper (23), William Fitzhugh (21), and Francis Fauquier (15). Except for William Cowper, these men all had interests in the continuation of the slave trade and slavery, and their letters can mostly be found in categories relating to the owning of and trading in enslaved people….
In Edmund Pendleton’s letters, we can clearly see that enslaved people are considered as personal property. Pendleton was an American plantation-owner and slaveowner, as well as an attorney. Several of his letters in Electronic Enlightenment discuss legal affairs, particularly inheritances.
Wheatley Peters’s Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) is one of the most important books to be published anywhere in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. It is important because it is a book written by a black woman who was very well aware that her new professional status as an author held the key to her own freedom. It is important because it is a work of creative intellect, whose young writer displayed her imaginative prowess while revealing her adroit mastery of the contemporary literary forms of lyric, elegy, and ode. It is important because it is a work of faith that spoke profoundly to a committed culture of evangelical Christianity, out of which the humanitarian movement to abolish the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery was beginning to emerge….
What did this book contain? In her Poems, Wheatley Peters gathered a substantial collection of thirty-nine pieces, including a range of elegies and odes, and hymns. There were poems about the inspiration of breaking dawns, soft evening light and the power of memory; poems which took their cue from Old Testament verses; poems urging religious virtue upon wayward Harvard students; and poems in which Wheatley Peters shared the grief of members of her congregation at Boston‘s Old South Meeting House at the sad loss of friends and family members. One poem was importantly dedicated to Scipio Moorhead, the talented Boston artist, who, like Wheatley Peters, was one of the approximately 5,000 enslaved black people then living in Massachusetts.
These excerpts have been lightly edited to fit the OUPblog’s style guide. No content was changed, and the full blog posts can be found at each of the above hyperlinks and on Electronic Enlightenment.
May 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of Elleke Boehmer’s seminal text Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, first published by OUP in 1995 with a second edition following a decade later. It remains a landmark publication in the field of colonial and postcolonial literature and beyond, read, studied, and taught the world over.
To mark this wonderful achievement, Elleke Boehmer reflects on her book and its longevity and shares some of her “must reads.” We are also pleased to offer chapter 4 “Metropolitans and Mimics”—as chosen by the author—free-to-read this May.
“I had no idea that, 30 years on, the book would still be globally read, cited, prescribed, and discussed…
Colonial and Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors continues to find its way to readers right around the world. In this sense, it is not unlike the migrating metaphors of the title—the images and motifs connecting imperial and postimperial texts that the book explores throughout.
Elleke Boehmer holds a copy of the first edition on publication day, 1995. Used with permission.
When I first published the book, I hoped that it would give greater profile to the great wealth and variety of postcolonial writing, alongside investigating its complicated roots in traditions of empire writing. On balance, I daresay that it has achieved those aims. But I had no idea that, 30 years on, the book would still be globally read, cited, prescribed, and discussed, as my academic news feeds tell me it is. I ask myself what its features are that have contributed to its ongoing success. From what I can tell, these include the book’s interest in empire as a system of textual circulation, and also its focus on the exchange of metaphors of land and belonging that interlink Anglophone postcolonial writings worldwide. Essays from across the postcolonial and world literature fields, including in French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, have picked up on these aspects. The translation of the book into Mandarin in 1999 seems to have ensured the book’s position also as prominent critical text on university courses in China. About 15 years ago, when first I visited the country, wherever I went people said kind things about the book, and talked about its beautiful cover, based on a painting by the Australian artist Lisa Hill.
The second and expanded edition, published in 2005, offered an updated bibliography and timeline, and two brand-new chapters featuring more postcolonial women writers from the turn of the new century, and more coverage of Indigenous and First Nations authors from countries like Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada.
Elleke Boehmer, Oxford, 2025
Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction, 2nd edition
Robert Young
Fascinating for its treatment of the postcolonial as a mind-set, as expressed in a wide range of cultural forms.
