A Journey Around My Room
1794 novel by Xavier de Maistre
A Journey Around My Room (originally published in French as Voyage autour de ma chambre) is a 1794 book by Xavier de Maistre. It was written to stave off boredom whilst the author was serving a 42-day sentence of confinement to his room for participating in an illegal duel. The book is written in the style of a travelogue and discusses the contents and furniture of his room as well as imaginary situations and dialogues. The theme of the work is that pleasure can be found in one's everyday surroundings. At the end of the work he notes his regret at having to return to society. The work is thought to have been first published in English in 1871. A sequel, A Nocturnal Expedition Around My Room, was published in 1825.
Background
Xavier de Maistre was a French aristocrat who, after the French Revolution, fled to Turin to join a counter-revolutionary army. Whilst in Turin in spring 1790 de Maistre fought an illegal duel for which he was sentenced to 42 days house arrest. The terms of his confinement required him to stay within his room.
“A Journey Around My Room” enters the record as 1794 novel by Xavier de Maistre. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Journey, Around and Room can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“A Journey Around My Room” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Journey, Around and Room provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10392559. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1794, 1871, 1825 and 1790.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Journey Around My Room” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.