Browse Items (44 total)
- Collection: Enlarging the prospects of happiness: European travel writing through the ages. Online exhibition
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An early coffee table book
This early version of the coffee-table book provides interesting insights into assumptions about Italian life, with its lively images of landmarks, religious processions, and peasant life. Given the French title and lack of publishing information, it…
Pisa
Although the tower of Pisa was already leaning by its completion date in 1370, not all seventeenth-century pictures show the slant as clearly as this one. From a family of booksellers, engravers, typographers and cartographers, Pietro Bertelli drew…
Milan
Not to be outdone by Venice, Pisa and Rome, Milan found her own historian in Carlo Torre. This engraving shows one of the oldest surviving Roman colonnades in the city, but does not lavish too much detail on the surroundings, consigning them to a…
Florence
As a historian of his birthplace, Migliore celebrates the grandeur of Florence in this elegant guidebook.
Venice
Published in Paris, in French, Silvestre's book is the only guidebook in the case clearly intended for a foreign audience. Drawing upon knowledge gained from several trips to Italy, he published engravings of the highlights and thus embarked on a…
A polite traveller and British navigator
This 12° book, containing two volumes of an eight-volume collection, highlights the strong interest in circumnavigations among readers of every rank. The frontispiece captures the compelling sense of danger, while the title-page enumerates the…
Sydney Parkinson, botanical draughtsman
Sydney Parkinson, botanical draughtsman on Cook's first voyage, died before returning to London, and his papers found their way to the library of Joseph Banks. Parkinson's brother, Stanfield, eventually obtained the papers, after a bitter public…
William Dampier, buccaneer
William Dampier was the most successful English buccaneer, redeeming his reputation as a mercenary adventurer by aspiring to the role of scientific explorer. This world map, drawn by Herman Moll, the premier cartographer of his day, shows the known…
Boswell and Brydon
By the second half of the eighteenth century, the grand tour had been so frequently recounted that Boswell and Brydone both sought more remote corners of Italy. Boswell's usual irrepressible enthusiasm and undaunted effrontery secured him the…
Spiritual guides
Typical of a whole class of spiritual guides to Rome, this little volume lists the holy sights and quantifies the redemptive value of visiting each in terms of indulgences and remission of sins. If one had only a limited time to spend in Rome, such a…
Topography
Gell's detailed study of the architectural discoveries unearthed at Pompei over the course of the eighteenth century provides an example of the strong English interest in topography and archaeology that often informed travel. This particular image…
The active volcano
As this page vividly illustrates, Vesuvius continued to be quite active after Raymond's visit. Published in Naples for an English audience, this book represents the nineteenth-century traveller's increasingly scientific interests.
A personal diary
This small vellum diary, with its middle tie, is precisely the sort of notebook an observant gentleman would be expected to carry on his travels. This traveller describes the coinages in Florence and Genoa, records epitaphs, and sketches coats of…
Common phrases for travelling
This somewhat battered little book attests to its apparent usefulness for some traveller, though it is difficult to imagine that the blend of scatalogical and salacious dialogue, 'Common Talke in an Inn', could ever have proved useful in any…
Imaginary dialogues
These two imaginary dialogues raise serious questions about the value of the grand tour. Locke is the more sceptical speaker, and ultimately the more forceful. In refuting the traditional argument that travel exposed one to the various guises of…
A book for the tourist
This curious book proved very popular in its day, perhaps because a traveller following its prescriptions could be sure of returning with much new knowledge and a broader understanding of the world. That is, if he survived the cool reactions of the…
Brice's guide to Paris
Into its seventh edition, Brice's guide to Paris clearly satisfied its customers, who needed two volumes just to appreciate what one city had to offer. Illustrations were also clearly a stong selling point, indicating that the book was appreciated at…
Thicknesse's account
Another popular account, Thicknesse proceeds more regularly than Pratt or Sterne, but their influence and elements of the picturesque are evident in the looming hills and the pious or pitiable pilgrims in the foreground. This account exemplifies the…
Sandys' journey
Remembered as a translator of Ovid and the Psalms, Sandys was initially a great traveller both to the east and then to the American colonies. This map of Jerusalem is carefully constructed to accompany Sandys's narrative; the reader proceeds in…
A journey into Greece
Dedicated to the King, this volume displays a reasonably early interest in natural history. Indeed, because Dr. Spon had published his account in French a decade earlier, and because an English bookseller had brought out a translation, Wheler had to…
Elegant picturesque views
While Boswell's impressive volume is more historical and topographical than Gilpin or Combe, his title reveals the emphasis readers and publishers placed on the 'views'. The 'pleasing effect' of St. Michael's Mount and its 'agreeable' situation with…
Cary's Traveller's Companion
This small volume provides the practical details needed to navigate the new road systems. Cary's maps, with the colour-coded distinctions among roads, beautifully conveys the intricate networks of communication that increasingly encouraged local…
Cannongate
This image of Canongate during a royal procession highlights Edinburgh's loyalty to the monarch as well as its impressive modernity. Scotland was no longer the potentially rebellious or poverty-stricken northern neighbour of earlier accounts.
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Sotheby's musings
Sotheby's youthful poems eagerly evoke the picturesque, and the engravings added to this second edition only heighten that sensibility. An evocation such as 'Hail, solemn wreck!' (10) does not connote praise, and the beauty of the moonlit ruin proves…
Millenium Hall
Although Millenium Hall is fictional, the title-page presents it as a domestic tour, and the explicitly 'improving' aim of the work is not out of keeping with other travels of its day. John Newbery, to whom Scott dedicates her book, was the first…