A Fashionable Tour Through the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi: The 1852 Journal of Juliette Starr Dana (Great Lakes Books) [Paperback]

Juliette Starr Dana (Author), David T. Dana (Editor), Brian Leigh Dunnigan (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2004 | Series: Great Lakes Books

A rare glimpse of American frontier life as told by the private journal of a wealthy woman's "pleasure" tour from New York City to Minnesota in the summer of 1852.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

It was extremely uncommon, if not unheard of, for a woman to travel without an escort in 1850s America for her own pleasure. Railroads did not yet reach the Mississippi, rapids barred ships from Lake Superior, and American Indians still inhabited the frontier. Traveling from New York City to Lake Superior's shores, the Mississippi River, and the newly created Minnesota Territory was most definitely not the ideal vacation—or was it?

A Fashionable Tour Through the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi is the complete daily journal written by Juliette Star Dana, a 35-year-old wife and mother, during her nine-week "pleasure" tour over three thousand miles of the United States in the summer of 1852. Traveling the frontier roads of rivers and lakes with only a female companion and her teenage son, Juliette sought the scenic waterfalls and shorelines along with such man-made sights as copper and lead mines, factories, military posts, and a prison. Juliette chronicles these places and the people therein—American Indians, soldiers, lawyers, and politicians—with engrossing detail, and also describes the journey’s numerous hardships of accidents, vermin, sickness, and disease.

This one-of-a-kind journal offers the reader rare glimpses of the bustling and booming pre–Civil War United States with a brisk voice not often heard in travel writing of this time. Additional features of this journal include an itemized list of the tour's cost, biographical and historical research notes by Juliette Starr Dana’s great-great-grandson David T. Dana III, and an introduction by Brain Dunnigan. Historians, women's studies scholars, Great Lakes tourists, and general readers alike will find this book an insightful, informative, and enchanting read.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814332056
• ISBN-13: 978-0814332054
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,862,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A most interesting read, August 29, 2004

By 

Joe G. Bax "J.Bax" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Fashionable Tour Through the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi: The 1852 Journal of Juliette Starr Dana (Great Lakes Books) (Paperback)

For those who like social history written by the comtempories of the actual events, this book is a delight. Mrs. Dana's own writing style is quick and to the point. The editors had the good sense not to get in her way. Thus, the reader gets the true flavor of what had to be an extraordinary event at that time. We just do not have that many contemporary observations from the softer sex. Mrs. Dana's comments are direct and insightful, not unlike those of another female diarists, Mary Chesnut.