Taking Travel Home: The Souvenir Culture of British Women Tourists, 1750-1830

In the late eighteenth-century, elite British women had the opportunity to travel, leading to the development of a souvenir culture. Key characters include Hester Piozzi, Anna Miller, Dorothy Richardson, and the Wilmot sisters, who traveled to Italy, England, Russia, and Spain. The book examines a wide range of objects, arguing that the rise of the souvenir is representative of female agency.

Format: Hardback
Length: 312 pages
Publication date: 26 April 2022
Publisher: Manchester University Press

In the late 18th century, a remarkable opportunity arose for elite British women to embark on transformative journeys abroad. The act of taking travel home unveils the fascinating souvenir culture these women cultivated, harnessing the power of texts and objects to realize their aspirations in the realms of connoisseurship, friendship, and science. Among the notable figures are Hester Piozzi, a forty-three-year-old woman who embarked on a honeymoon in Italy; Anna Miller, a thirty-one-year-old woman who accompanied her husband on a Grand Tour; Dorothy Richardson, a remarkable woman who undertook various tours of England spanning from her early childhood to her fifties; and the sisters Katherine and Martha Wilmot, who ventured to Russia in their late twenties.

Lady Elizabeth Holland stands as the epitome of a supreme tourist in this captivating book, accompanied by her husband on a series of remarkable adventures to diverse countries. Their journey took them to the enchanting cities of Paris, where they had the privilege of meeting Napoleon, and to Spain during the Peninsular War. Through a methodology rooted in literary and design theory, art history, material culture studies, and tourism studies, the book delves into a vast array of objects, ranging from intricately painted fans adorned with "ruins of Rome for a sequin apiece" to the revered beads blessed by the Popes. These souvenirs, representing the essence of female agency, became the vessels through which women crafted their own travel narratives, shaping spaces where they could freely create and assert control over their experiences.

Weight: 490g
Dimension: 147 x 222 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781526155276