The Orientalist discourse, i.e., the Western elites' perceptions and conceptualizations of the non-Western world founded on the division of the world into a superior Occident and an inferior Orient, is pervasive in these texts. However, it is also important to note that different narratives of the Orient emerge from these writings, depending on when they were published and who authored them. The letters and travelogues of British travelers such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, James Justinian Morier (his travel books are studied by Mo Zhang in “ Illustrations in James Justinian Morier's Travelogues: Turning Sketches into Prints” and by Amanda Morrow in “ Constructing Reality: Mapping James Justinian Morier's Journeys to the East”), William Makepeace Thackeray, and Alexander William Kinglake have played an important role in shaping Europeans' relationship with the “Orient” - a term which, in this context, refers to the geographical region now known as the Middle East. Those who would have traveled through Western Europe and especially Italy in earlier periods now turned their gaze toward the East, creating both textual and visual narratives of their voyages and experiences. 'Voyage en Orient' was famously used by the French writer and poet Gérard de Nerval as the title of the book he published in 1851 about his 1842 trip to Cairo and Beirut (among other destinations), which also included Oriental tales such as the Queen of Sheba. In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the idea of the “Voyage en Orient” progressively replaced the Grand Tour in the minds of some European travelers, writers, and artists.

Montagu turkish embassy letters