About Scholar Gipsy
Who am I?
My name is Roslyn Jolly, and I have been a professional writer and communicator for over twenty-five years. I am a traveller who reads and a reader who travels, and I’m writing this blog for people who love reading and travelling too.
For 24 years I taught English Literature to university students, while also researching the lives and works of nineteenth-century writers such as Henry James and Robert Louis Stevenson. At the end of 2013 I left my lecturing job, with very little idea of what might happen next. Nine months later (symbolic, hey?) I received my first professional travel writing commission, and since then I’ve had the good fortune to visit places as different as Borneo and Switzerland, and to see parts of my own country (Australia) I’d never seen before, while taking on the challenge of turning my travel experiences into stories that I hope will intrigue and inspire others.
Why Scholar Gipsy?
My blog name comes from Matthew Arnold’s 1853 poem ‘The Scholar-Gipsy’, which tells of a young scholar who abandoned his academic career to pursue a personal quest. I too exchanged my academic career for a freer, more wandering path. The name ‘Scholar Gipsy’ sums up the two sides of my life now. I still do academic research, and my studies always have and always will affect the way I experience the world when I travel. At the same time, I move around a lot these days, and even when I’m not on a trip I like to keep my gipsy side happy with micro-adventures and what I call ‘traveller’s trysts’ … which you can read more about here.
What’s this blog about and who is it for?
I believe that nourishing the life of the mind enriches our experience of the world, and I draw on my knowledge of literature and history to add spice and colour to my journeys. With this blog, I’m hoping to reach out to people who also want to weave together travel, learning and the arts.
I asked my husband, who is often my travelling partner and sometimes also my writing partner, how I could describe the kind of readers I imagine for my blog, and this is what he (delightfully) came back with:
‘Roslyn’s writing appeals to those of us who feel, with John Keats, that “the poetry of earth is never dead.” Her ideal readers are those for whom the experiences of travel, its setbacks as well as its delights, are as enriching as they are challenging, and as memorable as they are engaging. Roslyn’s unique voice, reflective and imaginative as it is, may help you to find the scholar-gipsy in yourself.’
