Ladies of the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe [Hardcover]

Brian Dolan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 6, 2001

According to the 1747 publication The Art of Governing a Wife, women in Georgian England were to "lay up and save, look to the house, talk to few and take of all within." However, some women broke from these directives and took up the distinctly male privilege of traveling to the Continent to develop mind, spirit, and body.

For many the Grand Tour -- often undertaken in great parades of coaches laden with servants, trunks, and furniture -- became an intellectual and romantic rite of passage. The landscape, health spas, salons, and social scene of Enlightenment Europe provided a wealth of glamorous, revolutionary, and therapeutic experiences from which many ladies returned "the best informed and most perfect creatures."

Brian Dolan leads us into the hearts and minds of the ladies through their stories, thoughts, and court gossip, recorded in journals, letters, and diaries. Ladies of the Grand Tour creates a mesmerizing portrait of a previously overlooked slice of eighteenth-century life.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For upper-class Englishmen in the 18th century, travel on the Continent represented pretty much what it does for college students today a chance to learn a few things and have some unsupervised fun. For women of that era, however, it might represent an opportunity denied to them at home: freedom from a narrowly defined femininity, the chance to develop and exercise their intelligence, an escape from an abusive marriage or, occasionally, a career as a travel writer or political correspondent. As Dolan points out, however, these benefits came at some real cost, since Continental travel, even for the rich, was neither comfortable nor safe, and the woman who remained too long abroad risked condemnation at home as unpatriotic, unfeminine or unchaste. While some were decidedly the last, using a sojourn abroad to pursue an irregular sexual liaison or to conceal its results, many found in revolutionary Paris or benign Tuscany a personal and intellectual liberty impossible in England and, like Mary Wollstonecraft, wrote home to say so. Although this book is richly detailed and immensely entertaining, it is a bit of a grab-bag in which women of no particular interest jostle for space with the genuinely significant. Still, it is hard to forget the otherwise obscure Elizabeth Webster, reluctant repatriate, being borne backwards over the Alps so that she would not lose sight of her beloved Italy until the last possible moment. 16 pages of color photos not seen by PW. (Nov. 16)Forecast: This entertaining volume will please students of women's history and of travel literature.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The notion of a grand tour of Europe as an essential rite of passage for aristocratic young Englishmen has been a historical given for generations. Dolan, a university lecturer, is more interested in a less common phenomenon: British women who traveled the Continent at a time when most aristocratic women's travels were narrowly constrained. Drawing on journals, letters, and diaries, Dolan explores the many goals those women sought in travel: "Education & Improvement," "Liberty & Independence," "Fashionable Society & Foreign Affairs," "Sea Breezes & Sanity," "Fine Art & Fashion," "Revelation & Revolution." Continental nations were hardly a feminist paradise, but traveling itself gave many women more freedom than they would have had at home, and writing about their travels gave many an opportunity to exercise their intelligence and define the characteristics of the Georgian lady of letters. Although it is not an essential acquisition, Ladies of the Grand Tour is thoroughly researched and gracefully written. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (November 6, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060185430
• ISBN-13: 978-0060185435
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,125,628 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Engaging Journey, November 26, 2001

By 

Leah M. Brown "Leah Marie Brown, Author" (Mentally in Paris, France) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ladies of the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Hardcover)

As someone who is passionate about the 18th century France, I purchased Mr. Dolan's book with great excitement and many anticipations. I am happy to say, it was a purchase well made. Ladies of the Grand Tour is an interesting look into the minds and hearts of European Women living during a tulmultuous times. Mr. Dolan deftly weaves contrasting views on society (ex: Burke and Wollstonecraft sound off opposing opinions about my idol, Marie Antoinette) making for a well-balanced read.
Though I have never been a huge fan of the unctuous Wollstonecraft, I found her quotes in this book illuminating and thought-provoking.
Christopher Hibbert published a wonderful book titled THE GRAND TOUR which reads like an 18th Century Tour Book of several of the finest cities in Europe. As fantastic as that book is, it does not deliver the human drama, the emotions of the female travelers, that Dolan's masterpiece offers.
Bravo!

Leah Marie Brown,
Author of Willing Captive

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Outstanding book both on travel and on women, August 5, 2005

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ladies of the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Hardcover)

I am delighted to be able to "live" 18th century travel through the eyes of the woman that Dolan brings to life. I am especially glad not to be travelling like they did - airport security gates are a much aggravation as I can take.

Dolan takes his topic broadly. The book is not just a recounting of travel incidents -- it spends considerable time on the significance of being abroad, particularly for those women who spend time in France during the Revolution, eventually fleeing as it turned into the Terror. He conveys a good sense of the differences between that time and this, when views and videos of faraway places are immediately and widely available.

This book is particularly set apart by Dolan's sensitive examination of the women's status in their society. I was particularly touched by his discussion of the double-bind that made women "frivolous" if they concentrated on domestic and personal matters, but "unwomanly and unnatural" if they attempted to broaden their horizons. I was aware that women were not usually well-educated in this era, but surprised to learn of the panic engendered if they attempted self-education.

An excellent book for those interested in this era, in travel, or in the historical situation of women.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent representation of the ambitions of 18th Century women, July 5, 2005

By 

G. McNeil (California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ladies of the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Hardcover)

Brian Dolan has created a masterpiece of historical narrative, highlighting the trials and tribulations of being an 18th Century British woman with aspirations to anything OTHER than domesticity. The characters he, in many cases, rescues from obscurity are brought to brilliant life through their own words, and immediately upon finishing this book (which I read during a plane flight from Europe to California) I wanted to run out and read all I could find on Mary and Agnes Berry, Elizabeth Carter, Lady Webster, Cornelia Knight, Elizabeth Montagu, and especially the exploits of Helen Williams and Mary Wollstencraft during the French Revolution. I admire Mr. Dolan's blending of historic documents, correspondence and a spritely, slightly unobjective narrative to create a work of nonfiction that reads with the ease of a novel. I unreservedly recommend this to anyone who is a fan of the Georgian period or of the works for Katie Hickman or Venetia Murray.