When the British talk about their “national treasures” they are invariably referring to such cultural grandees as the naturalist Sir David Attenborough, the playwright Alan Bennett, and the actor Dame Maggie Smith. To that list, it would not be amiss to add Jan Morris, the pioneering travel writer and groundbreaking transgender figure who died on Friday near her home in Llanystumdwy, Wales.
Morris, who was born in Somerset, England, in 1926, though became a fervent supporter of Welsh nationalism, underwent gender reassignment in 1972, at a time when the concept was little understood and widely reviled. In her best-selling memoir, Conundrum, she wrote vividly about her transition, noting the stark way in which her gender altered other people’s perceptions. “Just because I’m a woman, there are people now who think I haven’t got a mind any more,” she told The New York Times in 1974, the same year she appeared on the Dick Cavett show. The poet Eileen Myles, who selected Conundrum as one of her ten favorite books, wrote that “to read this great travel writer’s account of transition is to understand the word ‘journey’ truly.”
The author of more than four dozen books, Morris was best known for her wide-ranging travel writing, including seminal books on Trieste and Venice, as well as a three-volume history of the British Empire. Below, we’ve selected a range of works by Morris, as well as by writers who share a sensibility that could be described as Morrisonian.