SALE ON NOW! PROMOTIONS

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

Taking Travel Home

The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1750–1830

Emma Gleadhill

$96.95   $82.06

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Manchester University Press
01 July 2025
In the late eighteenth-century, elite British women had an unprecedented opportunity to travel. Taking travel home uncovers the souvenir culture these women developed around the texts and objects they brought back with them to realise their ambitions in the arenas of connoisseurship, friendship and science.

Key characters include forty-three-year-old Hester Piozzi (Thrale), who honeymooned in Italy; thirty-one-year-old Anna Miller, who accompanied her husband on a Grand Tour; Dorothy Richardson, who undertook various tours of England from the ages of twelve to fifty-two; and the sisters Katherine and Martha Wilmot, who travelled to Russia in their late twenties. The supreme tourist of the book, the political salon hostess Lady Elizabeth Holland, travelled to many countries with her husband, including Paris, where she met Napoleon, and Spain during the Peninsular War.

Using a methodology informed by literary and design theory, art history, material culture studies and tourism studies, the book examines a wide range of objects, from painted fans 'of the ruins of Rome for a sequin apiece' and the Pope's 'bless'd beads', to lava from Vesuvius and pieces of Stonehenge. It argues that the rise of the souvenir is representative of female agency, as women used their souvenirs to form spaces in which they could create and control their own travel narratives.
By:  
Imprint:   Manchester University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 138mm,  Spine: 22mm
Weight:   495g
ISBN:   9781526191618
ISBN 10:   152619161X
Series:   Gender in History
Pages:   312
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Emma Gleadhill is a Sydney-based historian and artist.

See Also