You've already read the book - why visit the place? When and why did readers start visiting sites of literary associations - whether writers' graves, birthplaces, houses, or the settings of novels? This original, witty, illustrated study offers the first analytical history of the rise and development of literary tourism in nineteenth-century Britain, associated with authors from Shakespeare, Gray, Keats and Burns to Scott, the Brontë sisters, and Thomas Hardy. Arguing for the twin importance of the rise of authorial biography and realist fiction in constructing tourist sentiment, practice, and sites, this book also offers a survey of the unjustly neglected literary genres associated with such tourism - guidebooks, travel-memoirs, essays on the 'homes and haunts' of authors, and full-length studies of 'literary geographies.' Indispensable for students of the literature, the travel literature, and the tourism of the nineteenth-century.
'absorbing, well-researched and informative' - The Yorkshire Post
'pioneering work...an exceptionally accessible and entertaining work of scholarship' - Samantha Matthews, TLS
'Watson has produced a book likely to interest readers in both the literary and tourist domains, and a study worth putting on the shelves of academic and public libraries.' - Stuart Hannabuss, Library Review
'She [Watson] writes from an agreeably personal standpoint, having undertaken a good deal of such touring on her own account.' - Michael Irwin, The Thomas Hardy Journal
'Combining exemplary historical scholarship with considerable critical and theoretical sophistication, she [Watson] offers sensitive readings on the one hand of the texts and literary careers that have brought about significant forms of literary tourism, and on the other, of the literary-touristic experience itself...this is an impressive study that will prove useful not just to specialists in tourism and travel writing, but to all scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and culture.' Carl Thompson, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin & Review
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Readers and Places
PART I: PLACING THE AUTHOR
An Anthology of Corpses
Cradles of Genius
Homes and Haunts
PART II: LOCATING THE FICTIVE
Ladies and Lakes
Literary Geographies
Epilogue: Enchanted Places and Never-Never Lands
Index
NICOLA J. WATSON has taught at Oxford and Harvard, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University. Her publications include Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 (1994), At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Materialist, and Feminist Criticism (with Mary Favret, 1994), an edition of Walter Scott's The Antiquary (2002) and England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (with Michael Dobson, 2002).
Description
You've already read the book - why visit the place? When and why did readers start visiting sites of literary associations - whether writers' graves, birthplaces, houses, or the settings of novels? This original, witty, illustrated study offers the first analytical history of the rise and development of literary tourism in nineteenth-century Britain, associated with authors from Shakespeare, Gray, Keats and Burns to Scott, the Brontë sisters, and Thomas Hardy. Arguing for the twin importance of the rise of authorial biography and realist fiction in constructing tourist sentiment, practice, and sites, this book also offers a survey of the unjustly neglected literary genres associated with such tourism - guidebooks, travel-memoirs, essays on the 'homes and haunts' of authors, and full-length studies of 'literary geographies.' Indispensable for students of the literature, the travel literature, and the tourism of the nineteenth-century.
Reviews
'absorbing, well-researched and informative' - The Yorkshire Post
'pioneering work...an exceptionally accessible and entertaining work of scholarship' - Samantha Matthews, TLS
'Watson has produced a book likely to interest readers in both the literary and tourist domains, and a study worth putting on the shelves of academic and public libraries.' - Stuart Hannabuss, Library Review
'She [Watson] writes from an agreeably personal standpoint, having undertaken a good deal of such touring on her own account.' - Michael Irwin, The Thomas Hardy Journal
'Combining exemplary historical scholarship with considerable critical and theoretical sophistication, she [Watson] offers sensitive readings on the one hand of the texts and literary careers that have brought about significant forms of literary tourism, and on the other, of the literary-touristic experience itself...this is an impressive study that will prove useful not just to specialists in tourism and travel writing, but to all scholars of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature and culture.' Carl Thompson, British Association for Romantic Studies Bulletin & Review
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction: Readers and Places
PART I: PLACING THE AUTHOR
An Anthology of Corpses
Cradles of Genius
Homes and Haunts
PART II: LOCATING THE FICTIVE
Ladies and Lakes
Literary Geographies
Epilogue: Enchanted Places and Never-Never Lands
Index
Authors
NICOLA J. WATSON has taught at Oxford and Harvard, and is currently Senior Lecturer in Literature at the Open University. Her publications include Revolution and the Form of the British Novel, 1790-1825 (1994), At the Limits of Romanticism: Essays in Cultural, Materialist, and Feminist Criticism (with Mary Favret, 1994), an edition of Walter Scott's The Antiquary (2002) and England's Elizabeth: An Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy (with Michael Dobson, 2002).
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