In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, legions of English citizens headed north. Why and how did Scotland, once avoided by travelers, become a popular site for English tourists? In Tourism and Identity in Scotland, 1770-1914, Katherine Haldane Grenier uses published and unpublished travel accounts, guidebooks, and the popular press to examine the evolution of the idea of Scotland. Though her primary subject is the cultural significance of Scotland for English tourists, in demonstrating how this region came to occupy a central role in the Victorian imagination, Grenier also sheds light on middle-class popular culture, including anxieties over industrialization, urbanization, and political change; attitudes towards nature; nostalgia for the past; and racial and gender constructions of the "other." Late eighteenth-century visitors to Scotland may have lauded the momentum of modernization in Scotland, but as the pace of economic, social, and political transformations intensified in England during the nineteenth century, English tourists came to imagine their northern neighbor as a place immune to change. Grenier analyzes the rhetoric of tourism that allowed visitors to adopt a false view of Scotland as untouched by the several transformations of the nineteenth century, making journeys there antidotes to the uneasiness of modern life. While this view was pervasive in Victorian society and culture, and deeply marked the modern Scottish national identity, Grenier demonstrates that it was not hegemonic. Rather, the variety of ways that Scotland and the Scots spoke for themselves often challenged tourists' expectations.

About the Author
Katherine Haldane Grenier is an Associate Professor of History at The Citadel, Military College of South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, USA.

Reviews
'Essential to an understanding of the role of tourism in Scotland, one of the great success stories in the development of tourism. Draws on a fascinating range of visitors' diaries and journals. . . . Thoroughly enjoyable and readable.' Alastair Durie, The University of Stirling, Scotland 'Katherine Grenier's new study is a significant contribution to the expanding recent literature on tourism and identity in Scotland, and raises issues which as she points out still have a significant cultural resonance today, for Scots and for visitors to Scotland.' Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies '... this book will help to redefine the research focus for anyone interested in the history, or indeed future, of the Scottish nation.' Studies in Travel Writing



Book Information
ISBN 9781138266377
Author Katherine Haldane Grenier
Format Paperback
Page Count 268
Imprint Routledge
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
Weight(grams) 453g