Abstract
While travel writing was arguably one of the earliest forms of writing,
tourism, understood as travel primarily for pleasure, is generally considered
a much later development, emerging in Britain in the eighteenth century. Yet
very rapidly tourism and travel writing developed a symbiotic though often
antagonistic relationship. From the early nineteenth century, travellers with
literary pretensions sought to distinguish their experiences from those of
mere tourists; at the same time tourists were defined in part by a particular
form of travel writing – the guidebook – and by their enjoyment of
a collective experience that more ‘literary’ travel writing increasingly
derided.
tourism, understood as travel primarily for pleasure, is generally considered
a much later development, emerging in Britain in the eighteenth century. Yet
very rapidly tourism and travel writing developed a symbiotic though often
antagonistic relationship. From the early nineteenth century, travellers with
literary pretensions sought to distinguish their experiences from those of
mere tourists; at the same time tourists were defined in part by a particular
form of travel writing – the guidebook – and by their enjoyment of
a collective experience that more ‘literary’ travel writing increasingly
derided.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | The Cambridge History of Travel Writing |
| Editors | Nandini Das, Tim Youngs |
| Place of Publication | Cambridge UK |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
| Chapter | 36 |
| Pages | 565-580 |
| Number of pages | 16 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9781316556740, 9781107148185 |
| Publication status | Published - 2019 |