Ladies of the Grand Tour

British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe

by Brian Dolan

Though 18th-century culture readily encouraged its sons to embark upon an enlightening "grand tour," women of the day rarely traveled,and when they did, it was for specific reasons--for their health or love life, accompanying a husband or fleeing one. This collection of observations made by female travelers samples the relatively spare documentation of such journeys, including work by Mary Wollstonecraft, Lady Elizabeth Montagu, Hester Thrale, and others.

Editions of Ladies of the Grand Tour

ISBN

9780060185435

Binding/Format

Hardcover

Publisher

Harpercollins

Date

2001

Price

$2.69

Very Good

Publisher Notes

According to the 1747 publication The Art of Governing a Wife, women in Georgian England were to "lay up and save, look to the house, talk to few and take of all within." However, some women broke from these directives and took up the distinctly male privilege of traveling to the Continent to develop mind, spirit, and body.

For many the Grand Tour -- often undertaken in great parades of coaches laden with servants, trunks, and furniture -- became an intellectual and romantic rite of passage. The landscape, health spas, salons, and social scene of Enlightenment Europe provided a wealth of glamorous, revolutionary, and therapeutic experiences from which many ladies returned "the best informed and most perfect creatures."

Brian Dolan leads us into the hearts and minds of the ladies through their stories, thoughts, and court gossip, recorded in journals, letters, and diaries. Ladies of the Grand Tour creates a mesmerizing portrait of a previously overlooked slice of eighteenth-century life.

Media Reviews

"[E]njoy a book full of odd, cranky, amusing, inconsequential and entertaining information, as much off the beaten track as the kind of journeying it celebrates."

Review this book!