Article published In: Trans(portable): English in the world
Edited by Julie Deconinck and Eva Ulrike Pirker
[English Text Construction 18:2] 2025
► pp. 136–165

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An ‘English home’

Constructions of familiarity and instability in Lucy Atkinson’s Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants (1863)

 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
 | Vrije Universiteit Brussel
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Vrije Universiteit Brussel.

Published online: 7 July 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/etc.25011.pir
Abstract
Other than considerations as a historical source, little has been written on Lucy Atkinson’s travelogue Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants (. 1863. Recollections of Tartar steppes and their inhabitants. London: John Murray.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) as a work of writing. This article sets out to redress that imbalance by analysing the role of the epistolary form and the linguistic implications of travel in the construction of the memoir. We aim to demonstrate that by means of language and form, the author explores the (trans)portability of the English language as a ‘home away from home’. First, the article considers the affordances granted by Atkinson’s use of the epistolary to construct her persona and narrative. Next, it explores the cultural translation in the travelogue by zooming in on shifting stances regarding the ‘self’ and the ‘Other’ in the text, e.g. by means of various language uses, and by connecting it to the problematisation of complex notions of ‘home’ and ‘Englishness’ during her travels.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Recollections, epistolarity and the potential of the letter
  • 3.The opportunities of form
  • 4.Projections of ‘home’ and ‘Englishness’
  • 5.Atkinson and the ‘Other’
  • 6.‘Home’ as an unstable concept
  • 7.The portable home: Atkinson’s politics of language
  • 8.“Pleasurable Reminiscences of past Adventures”
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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