From the mid-eighteenth century to the twentieth, tourism became established as a leisure industry and travel writing as a popular genre. In this collection of essays, leading international historians and travel writing experts examine the role of home tourism in the UK and Ireland in the development of national identities and commercial culture.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Notes on the Contributors Introduction: Home Tourism; B.Colbert Peripheral Vision, Landscape and Nation-Building in Thomas Pennant's Tours of Scotland 1769-1772; P.Smethurst Beside the Seaside: Mary Morgan's Tour to Milford Haven, in the Year 1791; Z.Kinsley 'Ancient and Present': Charles Heath of Monmouth and the Historical and Descriptive Accounts...of Tintern Abbey 1793-1828; C.S.Matheson Britain through Foreign Eyes: Early Nineteenth-Century Home Tourism in Translation; B.Colbert The Attractions of England, or Albion under German Eyes; J.Borm The Irish Tour, 1800-1850; W.H.A.Williams 'Missions of Benevolence': Tourism and Charity on Nineteenth-Century Iona; K.Haldane Grenier Holiday Excursions to Scott Country; N.J.Watson 'Every hill has its history, every region its romance': Travellers' Constructions of Wales, 1837-1911; K.Gramich Famine Travel: Irish Tourism from the Great Famine to Decolonization; S.Thompson Meeting Kate Kearney at Killarney: Performances of the Touring Subject, 1850-1914; K.J.James 'The romance of the road': Narratives of Motoring in England, 1896-1930; E.Coulbert Home Truths: Language, Slowness, and Microspection; M.Cronin Bibliography Index