English Travel Narratives in the Eighteenth Century: Exploring Genres (Studies in Early Modern English Literature)

A cultural phenomenon and a theme of guidebooks, narratives and commentaries, the 18th-century Grand Tour was constantly re-worked and subject to variations. Equally, the author remarks that any "genre" of travel literature of this time would be protean in the extreme, but the writings of Joseph Addison, whose "Spectator" held sway over this epoch, would have to be the source of many of the recurrent features to be found in narratives written by novice writers in unfamiliar countries. This text explores the travel writing of the 18th century, examining the shift in the perceptions of tourists that can be seen by the time of Wordsworth and Stendhal, writing 100 years after Addison. By the beginning of the 19th century, travel "for pleasure" rather than to learn about the country visited became the norm, with a view to a growing hedonistic pleasure that had evolved through Romanticism.