Outdoor literature is a literature genre about or involving the outdoors. Outdoor literature encompasses several different subgenres including exploration literature, adventure literature, mountain literature and nature writing. Another subgenre is the guide book, an early example of which was Thomas West's guide to the Lake District published in 1778. The genres can include activities such as exploration, survival, sailing, hiking, mountaineering, whitewater boating, geocaching or kayaking, or writing about nature and the environment. Travel literature is similar to outdoor literature but differs in that it does not always deal with the out-of-doors, but there is a considerable overlap between these genres, in particular with regard to long journeys.
History
's Walden is an early and influential work. Although not entirely an outdoor work he expressed the ideas of why people go out into the wilderness to camp, backpack and hike: to get away from the rush of modern society and simplify life. This was a new perspective for the time and thus Walden has had a lasting influence on most outdoor authors.
Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes, about his travels in Cévennes, is among the first popular books to present hiking and camping as recreational activities, and tells of commissioning one of the first sleeping bags. In the world of sailing Joshua Slocum's Sailing Alone Around the World is a classic of outdoor literature. In April 1895, Joshua Slocum set sail from Boston, Massachusetts and in Sailing Alone Around the World, he described his departure: More than three years later, on June 27, 1898, he returned to Newport, Rhode Island, having circumnavigated the world, a distance of more than 46,000 miles. The National Outdoor Book Award was established in 1997 as a US-based non-profit program which each year honours the best in outdoor writing and publishing.
* John Hillaby, Journey to the Jade Sea ; Journey through Britain; Journey through Europe; Journey to the Gods. Accounts of various long distance walks.
* Patrick Leigh Fermor, A Time of Gifts ; Between the Woods and the Water ; The Broken Road. A trilogy describing a walk across Europe.
* Cheryl Strayed, '. Describes the grueling life of the long-distance hiker, the perils of the PCT, and its peculiar community of wanderers.
* Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination; The Wild Places; The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. He is one of a number of recent British writers who have provoked a new critical and popular interest in writing about landscape.
