Discovering Britain and Ireland in the Romantic Period
Grand Tours

An interdisciplinary collection exploring the practice and representation of tourism in Britain in the heyday of the continental Grand Tour.

James Watt (Edited by), Alison O'Byrne (Edited by)

9781108842693, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 27 March 2025

291 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 2.1 cm, 0.58 kg

Even as members of the social elite participated in the European Grand Tour, travellers, writers, and readers increasingly recognized that Britain and Ireland might offer sights and experiences to rival the continent. This collection examines the practice and representation of tourism on 'home' ground during the period when modern Britain was invented and became a powerful and prosperous imperial nation. Interdisciplinary essays explore the diverse variety of tours and tourist agendas – artistic, industrial, leisure, scientific – and they address the ways in which travellers' 'discovery' of Britain and Ireland was an active and often self-critical process that potentially encompassed encounters with the alien and unfamiliar. Considering travellers from the wider world as well as from within Britain and Ireland, contributors discuss the function of comparative reference in contemporary travel-writing, as tourists often thought with and through others as they reflected on the distinctiveness and significance of the sites that they visited.

Introduction Alison O'Byrne and James Watt
1. Discovering Britain and Ireland: Goldsmith's grand tours James Watt
2. Frances Burney at the seaside Harriet Guest
3. Moving pictures: Thomas Sandby in the East Midlands and Yorkshire John Bonehill
4. Watercolour, extreme weather, electricity: Cornelius varley in North Wales 1802-5 Elizabeth Edwards
5. 'Another view of Ireland': tourism and war on the 'Irish Road' in 1790s Wales Mary-Ann Constantine
6. 'A scene of Terror, Tumult, and Confusion': Irish Gothic Tourism Jim Kelly
7. Experimental Tourism: Aesthetics, Science, and World History in the Highlands of Scotland Ian Duncan
8. 'Such classic ground': Women and the Romantic-Era Scottish Tour Pam Perkins
9. 'Manchester is, as it were, the heart of this vast system': Two Northern Industrial Tours of the 1790s Jon Mee
10. 'Diffusive Opulence': Foreign Travellers' views of Romantic London Alison O'Byrne
11. Metropolitan Thresholds: Abu Talib, Juliette Récamier, and Touristic Worldmaking Daniel O'Quinn
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]