Bringing Travel Home to England

We hold tourism in common as we might a currency or a language. Yet rarely have we thought seriously about how it has shaped our lives, our sense of sexual, religious, political, and social alternatives, or our literatures. This book is the first to identify and examine the relations among literature, tourism, and the wider culture in the long eighteenth century. Gendering emerges as a key mechanism here both for those who brought travel home and for those who were influenced by it in other ways. The author brings Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, and William Wordsworth side-by-side with lesser known authors such as Thomas Amory, Sarah Scott, and the anonymous author of The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu; and nuns, iconic Lake District shepherdesses, country houses, gardens, and whores, with accounts of tourists, opinions about them, and commentary on the place of tourism in society.

Susan Lamb is associate professor of English literature at the University of Toronto.