Enfilade

I recently stumbled across the following digital resource, though I’ve not yet had the opportunity to use it (relatively few libraries seem to have yet picked it up). Comments are especially welcome from anyone who has begun to explore it. -CH.   The following description comes from the website of Adam Matthew Digital:

The Grand Tour, a collection of research materials from Adam Matthew Digital

Editorial Board: Jeremy Black (University of Exeter), Melissa Calaresu (University of Cambridge), Edward Chaney (Southampton Solent University), Rosemary Sweet (University of Leicester), Emma Winter (Columbia University)

Source Libraries: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University, British Library, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Private Library of Edward Chaney, Birmingham Art Gallery, Durham University Library, Surrey History Centre, Southampton University, Cornwall Record Office, Northumberland County Archive, Buckinghamshire Archives, West Yorkshire Archive, Devon County Record Office

Nature of the Material
This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. Printed texts have been double-keyed enabling full text-search; manuscript items have been indexed. A good number of images are in full colour, including all paintings. We include:

• Letters
• Diaries and journals
• Account books
• Printed guidebooks
• Published travel writing
• Paintings and sketches
• Architectural drawings
• Maps

Scope of the Collection
Taking the phenomenon of the Grand Tour as a starting point, this resource explores the relationship between Britain and Europe between c1550 and c1850, exploring the British response to travel on the Continent for pleasure, business and diplomacy. The Grand Tour includes the travel writings and works of some of Britain’s greatest artists, writers and thinkers, revealing how interaction with European culture shaped their creative and intellectual sensibilities. It also includes many writings by forgotten or anonymous travellers, including many women, whose daily experiences offer a vivid insight into the experience and practicalities of travel over the centuries. This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to explore Anglo-European relations during this period from every angle. Topics covered include:

• European political and religious life
• British diplomacy
• Material culture, taste and collecting
• Everyday life
• Life at court and social customs on the Continent

There is a wealth of detail about cities such as Paris, Geneva, Venice, Rome, Florence and Naples, that will excite both urban and architectural historians. The Grand Tour is also wonderful source of information about daily life between 1550 and 1850, highlighting such everyday issues as transportation, money, communications, food and drink, health and sex. The collection has a very broad appeal, and will be of great interest to: social, cultural and political historians interested in the period 1550-1850; literary scholars; and art history or fine art departments.

Primary Materials
Manuscripts of many prominent figures, including Sir William Hamilton, Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas Hoby, Richard Lassels, Sir Philip Sidney, John Evelyn, Charles Burney and Joseph Spence are featured. We also include a good number of accounts from female travellers, including Lady Hester Stanhope and Elizabeth Craven. We include many rare and essential printed sources, including travel accounts, guide books, histories and accounts of religious and political life. Authors include Henry Swinburne, Mariana Starke, J. Fenimore Cooper, Tobias Smollett and Henry Matthews. Visual material is a great strength of the resource, and we include a large number of paintings and sketches of Italy and the Continent, as well as portraits of Grand Tourists, by artists including: JMW Turner, Pompeo Batoni, Richard Wilson, William Pars, Thomas Rowlandson and Joseph Wright of Derby.

Secondary Sources
These primary materials are supplemented by excellent secondary sources to aid students with research:

• A searchable, full-text version of John Ingamell’s landmark Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800. This remarkable work identifies over 6000 individual travellers, providing biographies and details of their tours. It also functions as a database of manuscripts not included in the resource.
• A selection of digitised source material from the Brinsley Ford Archive at the Paul Mellon Centre, London. This incomparable research collection contains the notes, clippings and research gathered by Sir Brinsley Ford, from which John Ingamells compiled the Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701-1800.
• An indexed collection of hundreds of quality, modern photographs of Italy, providing a detailed visual source of all the historical sites, palaces and streets visited by tourists, to help students contextualise the written accounts.
• Exclusive essays by leading scholars from Art History, History, and Urban Studies perspectives, contextualising the Grand Tour and interpreting sources.