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Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
This book provides a selection of private letters written to family
and friends from a variety of people while they were on the Grand
Tour in the eighteenth century. Although many have been published
previously, this is the first time that letters of this kind have
been brought together in a single volume. Readers can compare the
various responses of travellers to the sights, pleasures and
discomforts encountered on the journey. People of diverse
backgrounds, with different expectations and interests, give
personal accounts of their particular experiences of the Grand
Tour. Unlike most collections of letters from the Tour, which
recount the views of a single person, this selection emphasises
diversity. Readers can juxtapose for example the letters of a
conscientious young nobleman like Lyttelton with those of the
excitable philanderer Boswell, or the well-travelled aristocratic
lady, Caroline Lennox. While the travellers represented here follow
much the same route via Paris, through France and across the Alps
via the terrifying Mount Cenis, to Rome, in the pursuit of learning
and pleasure, the Tour turns out to mean something quite different
to each of them.
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