Italy and the Grand Tour

by Jeremy Black

For members of the social elite in eighteenth-century England, extended travel for pleasure came to be considered part of an ideal education as well as an important symbol of social status. Italy, and especially Rome - a fashionable, exciting and comfortable city - became the focus of such early tourists' interest. In this distinctive book, historian Jeremy Black recreates the actual experiences of those who travelled to Italy on a Grand Tour. Relying on the private diaries and personal letters of travellers, rather than on the self-conscious accounts of literary travellers who wrote for wider audiences, the book presents a fresh and authentic picture of how British tourists experienced Italy, its landscapes, women, food, music, Catholicism and more.

Genres: History, Research, Nonfiction, Italy

268 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2003

About the author

Jeremy Black is an English historian, who was formerly a professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of America and the West at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US.
Black is the author of over 180 books, principally but not exclusively on 18th-century British politics and international relations, and has been described by one commentator as "the most prolific historical scholar of our age". He has published on military and political history, including Warfare in the Western World, 1882–1975 (2001) and The World in the Twentieth Century (2002).

Reviews

[Emma]

A history of Italy as a stop on the "Grand Tour" that the British upper classes were mad for in the 18th century (and then war broke out and that whole travel thing got complicated.) Interesting bits, kind of lost the thread at the end.
Another reviewer commented on the author's tendency to introduce every single person (well, man) like this: Laurence Smith, later an MP and Baron Boring, subsequently Earl Epting. EVERY time. It made me laugh. I mean I understand the purpose. When someone whose name was Smith is suddenly referred to as Epting it is confusing, but it was funny.

[Victoria Lawson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful resource for someone studying the early years of tourist culture.