Travel writing and the renegotiation of the English landscape, 1760-1800

In this paper it is illustrated that late eighteenth-century English travel guidebook writers promoted idyllic rural landscapes that met or were created to meet picturesque tastes while concurrently advocating the alteration of regional landscapes by means of agriculture, industry and transportation routes. While the impulses behind nostalgic and developed landscapes are at cross-purposes, both were concepts used by guidebook authors to renegotiate perceptions of their local regions: the former to exhibit regional beauties and marvels by appealing to the prevailing aesthetics, the latter to combat stereotypes of backwardness, reframing regional identities within national trends of development and "improvement." In this way late eighteenth-century travel guidebooks afford an interesting perspective on the rural English landscape of that period and how it was seen, experienced and represented by local promoters.Arts, Faculty ofHistory, Department ofGraduat