3. Explorers, 1790–1822

James Bruce, Travels between the Years 1768 and 1773, Through Part of Africa, Syria, Egypt, and Arabia into Abyssinia, to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790) James Bruce (1730–94) was a Scottish laird whose profits from coal mining helped finance his travels. In 1762...

4. THE COMING OF THE MISSIONARIES, 1796–1824

William Wilson, A Missionary Voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean (1799) In 1796 a ship chartered by the non-denominational London Missionary Society (founded the previous year) set sail for the South Sea islands, arriving at Tahiti in March 1797. The missionaries were at first beset...

2. Picturesque Tourism

Thomas Gray, Journal in the Lakes (1769; from The Correspondence of Thomas Gray, vol. iii, ed. P. Toynbee and L. Whibley, Oxford, 1935) Thomas Gray (1716–71), poet and scholar, kept a journal of his 1769 tour of the Westmorland Lakes in the form of...

1. Classical Ground

Joseph Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, etc. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703 (1705; from Addison, Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii, ed. A. C. Guthkelch, 1914) Best known as author of the weekly magazine The Spectator (1711–12), Joseph Addison (1672–1719) produced...

5. Off the Beaten Track

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, ‘Embassy Letters’ (1716—18; from The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol. i, ed. Robert Halsband; Oxford, 1965) Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689–1762) travelled through eastern Europe to Constantinople with her husband Edward on his appointment as ambassador to...

4. Revolutionary Tourism

Arthur Young, Travels, during the Years 1787, 1788 and i789. Undertaken more particularly with a View of ascertaining the Cultivation, Wealth, Resources and National Prosperity, of the Kingdom of France (1792) Arthur Young (1741–1820), experimental farmer and agricultural writer, made his reputation with a series...

2. Debating the Tour

The Gentleman’s Magazine (vol. 1, 7 August 1731), ‘London Journal’ The Gentleman’s Magazine, or Monthly Intelligencer, launched by the printer Edward Cave in 1731, was perhaps the most influential of the mid-eighteenth-century English periodicals. The magazine’s critique of the Grand Tour attacks its educational...

1. Privateers, 1680–1744

William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697–1703) William Dampier (1652–1715) joined a crew of privateers in the Spanish Main and crossed the Isthmus of Darien to the Pacific, a wider field for plunder, in 1679. In his series of travel memoirs we read...

1. Surveyors and Explorers

JOHN LAWSON, A New Voyage to Carolina; Containing the Exact Description and Natural History of that Country: Together with the Present State thereof (1709) John Lawson (d. 1711) arrived in North Carolina in 1700, worked as a deputy to the colony’s Surveyor-General, and succeeded to...

4. Ladies

Janet Schaw, Journal of a Lady of Quality; Being the Narrative of a Journey from Scotland to the West Indies, North Carolina, and Portugal, in the Years 1774 to 1776 (ed. E. W. Andrews and C. Andrews, New Haven, 1921) Janet Schaw (c....