Enfilade

From York’s Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies:

Yorkshire Tourism in the Eighteenth Century
University of York, King’s Manor, 8 December 2012

J.M.W. Turner, Bolton Abbey, Yorkshire, on the Wharfe
ca. 1798, watercolour on paper

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Travel for pleasure or health in Britain and Ireland first became widely available to the affluent middling classes in the eighteenth century. For much of the period 1700-1830, Britain was at war with at least one of its continental neighbours; possibilities for European travel were severely restricted, and tourism within Britain and Ireland flourished. What did this newly accessible and eagerly grasped freedom to roam mean to the domestic tourist; how did the pictorial and/ or textual representation of journeys or sites shape their sense of themselves or of the country in the crucial period of its transition to becoming a modern and united kingdom?

The workshop is a follow-up to last year’s successful event, The Grand Tour in Britain and Ireland. Each speaker will consider an image or series of images, a short text or extracts from a longer piece, and offer a brief exploration of the possibilities of this material before opening the floor to discussion.

P R O G R A M M E

• Ann-Marie Akehurst (York), ‘Broken Stones, Decayed Buildings, and Old Rubbish’: Genealogy of Place, Imagination, and Identity in Early Modern York(shire)’
• John Bonehill (Glasgow), ‘Fairfaxiana: J.M.W Turner at Farnley’
• Oliver Cox (Oxford), ‘Back in the Summer of (17)69: Domestic Tourism and the Yorkshire Petition’
• Mary Fairclough (York), ‘Infidel Missionaries: Robert Taylor and Richard Carlile in Leeds’
• Harriet Guest (York), ‘A Trip to Scarborough’
• David Higgins (Leeds), ‘The Wordworths Visit Yorkshire’
• Emma Major (York), ‘Sibyl, Yorkshire, and the Two Nations’

The registration fee for the day is £12 (£5 for students and unwaged). To register, please email cmb14@york.ac.uk.