Studying these youths and the types of trips they undertook draws attention to trends of mass tourism in the twentieth century, such as travel’s extension to those beyond European elites and the inclusion of women, but specifically shows how these trends intersected with adult Americans’ preoccupation with youth and youth culture in the interwar years. While scholars such as Brooke Blower and Whitney Walton have considered the experience of Americans in Europe between the world wars, what has not been considered is youth travel – both actual travel and representations of it back in the United States – outside of formal collegiate study abroad and exchange programs 3. These American youths recorded detailed accounts of their trips until they returned home weeks and sometimes months later, yet their experiences and those of others like them have yet to be studied. Fifteen-year-old Clara Schiefer, sixteen-year-olds Anna Taylor and Rosalie Durrette, and nineteen-year-olds Yvonne Blue and Eleanor Winograd offered similar descriptions in their travel writing in the late 1920s and 1930s 2. Across the top of the page she wrote, « Goodbye USA » 1. A girl, presumably Victoria herself, waves goodbye to the New York City skyline as she gazes at a circular buoy with the name of the ship that would carry her to Europe: « S.S.
2 Clara Louise Schiefer Diary, 1933, SC 00724, Special Collections, Swem Library, College of William (.).
1 I would like to thank Phillip Emanuel, David (Mac) Marquis and Nadine Zimmerli for reading drafts o (.).
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