I still believe that in order for a written work, poem, prose, etc., it needs to evoke an emotion in the reader. Upon reading this travel log, I can see where it might be considered literary, but literature it is not! I prefer a plot of some kind and I do not see a plot in Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. According to the back cover of the book, “A Short Residence is her own travel memoir.” (Back cover of Letters…). In my opinion, a travel log, is just an account of where the person had gone, what they had done and the sites and things that person had seen or experienced. This simply reminds me of a travel flyer. It is very impersonal and not very interesting.
Now I will try to decide how it might be literary. “Literary” books are those that are more about ideas than narrative. Mary Wollstonecraft explains what takes place and using her descriptions of nature, and allusions to other writers, such as Jonathon Swift. She does reference Shakespeare, “Spirits unseen seemed to walk abroad, and flit from cliff to cliff, to sooth my soul to peace.” (p. 119). In my research of Mary Hays, I found that Hays and Wollstonecraft became friends after Hays wrote to Wollstonecraft “admiringly” (Wikipedia). So maybe in that respect, this might be considered “literary”. Wollstonecraft was an influence for Hays and other writers.
This book could be called literature because it is a written work, the instructions to fix a toilet, I guess, might be called literature in that respect. The Oxford English Dictionary has the word as pointing to “written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit”. (Jonathon Gibbs). Using language in ways that differ from ordinary usage would make it literature. I do have to say, “Listening to this book, it does have some wording in it that requires me to look up the words”.
Jonathon Gibbs. What counts as Literature. https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/what-counts-as-literature/.
Wollstonecraft, Mary. ed. by Ingrid Horrocks. Letters Written during a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark”. Broadview Press, 2013.
Literature Rocks 