Brigitte Bailey – författare

Examines tourists' aesthetic responses in the context of US nation formation'American Travel Literature' analyses US tourist writings about Italy from 1824 to 1862 to explain what roles transatlantic travel, aesthetic response, and the genre of tourist writing played in the formation of the United States. Its interdisciplinary methodology draws on antebellum visual culture, tourist practices, and shifting class and gender identities to describe tourism and tourist writing as shapers of an elite (and then normative) national subjectivity.Bringing perspectives from art history and aesthetics, the book historicises aesthetic practices by tracing nineteenth-century US representations of Italy. It draws connections between tourist writing and visual culture as means of understanding the depth of Americans' turn towards visual iconography in articulating social and national identities.Key FeaturesThe interdisciplinary approach pushes analysis of growing area of travel writing furtherThe trope of Italy as a woman reveals how gendered patterns of thought and response processed concepts of national identity thus recognising gender as a crucial mode of perceptionHistoricizes aesthetic practices by looking closely at a particular genre (tourist writing) and its social functions in the antebellum period

Examines tourists’ aesthetic responses in the context of US nation formationAmerican Travel Literature analyses tourist writings about Italy from 1824 to 1862 to explain what roles transatlantic travel, aesthetic response and the genre of tourist writing played in the formation of the United States. The Italian tour and its textual and visual expressions were forms through which predominantly white, northeastern elites dreamed their way into national identity and cultural authority. Its interdisciplinary methodology draws on antebellum visual culture, tourist practices and shifting class and gender identities to describe tourism and tourist writing as shapers of an elite (and then normative) national subjectivity. Bringing perspectives from art history and aesthetics, it historicises aesthetic practices, illuminating the depth of Americans’ turn towards visual iconography in articulating social and national identities. The book investigates tourists’ triangulations of the categories of ‘England’, ‘Italy’ and ‘America’, discusses authors understood as national representatives − Irving, Cooper, Sedgwick, Kirkland, Fuller, Hawthorne and Stowe − in the context of other US and European writers and artists and looks at transatlantic tourist writing as a significant genre of the period that shaped the nation. Key FeaturesThe interdisciplinary approach pushes analysis of growing area of travel writing furtherThe trope of Italy as a woman reveals how gendered patterns of thought and response processed concepts of national identity thus recognising gender as a crucial mode of perceptionHistoricizes aesthetic practices by looking closely at a particular genre (tourist writing) and its social functions in the antebellum period

“Humanity can be divided into three classes: men, women, and Margaret Fuller.”—Edgar Allan PoeA true American original—radical transcendentalist, intrepid journalist, and pioneering feminist—joins Library of America with the most authoritative single-volume collection of her writings ever, including many rare and previously unpublished works, newly transcribed from original notebooks and journalsTranscendentalist, journalist, feminist, activist, public intellectual, war correspondent, poet: Margaret Fuller’s achievement in her short life was as diverse, wide-ranging, and radical as her multi-generic writings. Now, at long last, this pioneering writer joins Library of America with the most comprehensive and most authoritative version of her writings ever published.Here are her two best-known books: Summer on the Lakes, in 1843, an account of her travels to the Great Lakes, a plea for better treatment of the American Indian peoples, and a sketchbook of Fuller’s thought; and Woman in the Nineteenth Century, the foundational document of American feminism and the first major work on women’s rights since Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman fifty-three years earlier.Joining them are a generous selection of Fuller’s published essays and journalism, including “American Literature” and her reviews and columns for the New York Tribune, as well as her war correspondence from besieged Rome in 1849; unpublished writings and selections from Fuller’s journals, many previously unknown and newly transcribed for this volume; and a selection of Fuller’s letters, including three newly translated from the original Italian.Rounding out the volume are a chronology by Fuller’s biographer Megan Marshall, along with helpful notes identifying Fuller’s many allusions and quotations, and an index.