Mobility has recently become a keyword in discussions of literature and culture. Form world-historical processes like migration and the slave trade to local mobilities of travel, translation and transplantation, and finally to the narrative shaping of individual life trajectories in the bildungsroman, personal and social forms of mobility appear to provide a vital link between modes of experience and their cultural stylizations. different versions of `mobility´ form the basis for a renewed interest in the relationship between experiences of reality and cultural forms in the widest sense. What is examined in this volume is the value of mobility concepts for understanding literature and culture in interdisciplinary perspectives. Contributions explore experiences and representations of mobility between 1500 and 1900, especially in the following areas: travel, trade and tourism; genres and individual works of literature as products and media of mobility; cultural and transcultural patterns of mobility in relation to the forming of individual and collective identities; public and private, urban and rural spaces, physical vs. mental movements in space and time.