Travellers in Eighteenth-Century Europe is an edited collection with contributions by leading scholars brought together by a prolific author with expertise in eighteenth-century culture.
The Grand Tour was considered a part of the education of a young gentleman. Travellers included blossoming scholars, poets, writers and scientists. Visits were made to Greece and Italy via France and Switzerland, often taking in Turkey. But women also traveled extensively, though these accounts have been under-explored. The book will examine first-hand accounts of the impact of foreign travel on both women and men, seen through their letters, travel diaries, journals and their creative response in poems, music and art. Its originality is seen in its exploration of a comparison between the views of women and men abroad and the differences in what they deemed interesting and worthy of comment. The book is especially relevant in light of the many past (and current) xenophobic views of the ‘foreigner’; Here, we more often see travellers viewing their experience of ‘otherness’ and exoticism, in a positive light, a cultural appreciation rather than a cultural appropriation. This book examines how men and women saw these new worlds opening up before them; what delighted them, what influenced them, and their interaction with others in the light of domesticity, antiquity, politics, work, science, sex, and friendships.
