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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Touring and Publicizing England's Country Houses in the Long Eighteenth Century

Touring and Publicizing England's Country Houses in the Long Eighteenth Century

Hardcover

European ArtArchitecture History

ISBN10: 1501334972
ISBN13: 9781501334979
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: Feb 22 2018
Pages: 256
Weight: 1.14
Height: 0.63 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

Over the course of the long 18th century, many of England's grandest country houses became known for displaying noteworthy architecture and design, large collections of sculptures and paintings, and expansive landscape gardens and parks. Although these houses continued to function as residences and spaces of elite retreat, they had powerful public identities: increasingly accessible to tourists and extensively described by travel writers, they began to be celebrated as sites of great importance to national culture. This book examines how these identities emerged, repositioning the importance of country houses in 18th-century Britain and exploring what it took to turn them into tourist attractions.

Drawing on travel books, guidebooks, and dozens of tourists' diaries and letters, it explores what it meant to tour country houses such as Blenheim Palace, Chatsworth, Wilton, Kedleston and Burghley in the tumultuous 1700s. It also questions the legacies of these early tourists: both as a critical cultural practice in the 18th century and an extraordinary and controversial influence in British culture today, country-house tourism is a phenomenon that demands investigation.

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