This book investigates how the concept of 'curiosity' functioned as a central, unstable discourse within Romantic-era travel writing to shape colonial perceptions of non-Western regions. Nigel Leask, a scholar of Romantic literature, synthesizes primary travel accounts with interdisciplinary research from geography, history, and anthropology. He argues that the aesthetic framing of travel writing during the period between 1770 and 1840 served to mediate the complex power dynamics between the observer and the observed in the context of expanding imperial interests.

Scholars in the field of Romantic studies and post-colonial literature frequently cite this work as a foundational text for understanding the intersection of travel writing and imperial ideology. Readers often note the academic density of the prose, which demands a high level of familiarity with both literary theory and the historical context of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.