HY323      One Unit
Travel, Pleasure and Politics: The European Grand Tour, 1670-1825

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

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Throughout the eighteenth century thousands of young British men and women embarked on extensive journeys to continental Europe – an activity known as the Grand Tour.  'Travel, Pleasure and Politics:  The European Grand Tour 1670-1825' explores who these people were, where they went, and the reasons for their expeditions.  For some, the Tour was the final stage of formal education; to others an opportunity for sexual adventures and pleasure-seeking.  The course discusses the practical challenges of eighteenth-century travel, the political, religious, and cultural contexts of the Tour, as well as the key places to visit and the reasons for their popularity.  It also considers what the Tourists brought back with them:  from physical artefacts for public and private collections, to new ways of seeing and understanding the world.  'Travel, Pleasure and Politics' introduces students to the actual writings of the Tourists, showing how they experienced international travel and shaped the modern tourist industry.

2 hours of seminars in the Spring Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the WT and 2 essays in the AT and WT.

Specifically, the course's formative coursework will consist of two essays (AT and WT), one document analysis (WT). Students will also have an opportunity to sit a mock exam.

Jeremy Black, The British Abroad:  The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century (New York:  St Martin’s Press, 1992)

James Buzard, ‘The Grand Tour and after (1660-1840)’, in Peter Hulme and Tim Youngs, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2002) Chloe Chard, A Critical Reader of the Romantic Grand Tour:  Tristes Plaisirs (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2014)

Chloe Chard, A Critical Reader of the Romantic Grand Tour:  Tristes Plaisirs (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2014)

Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 1660-1760 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007)

Stephen Conway, Britain, Ireland, and Continental Europe in the Eighteenth Century:  Similarities, Connections, Identities (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Brian Dolan, Ladies of the Grand Tour (London:  HarperCollins, 2001)

Rosemary Sweet, Cities and the Grand Tour:  The British in Italy, 1690-1820 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2012)

John Towner, ‘Venturing Abroad:  The European Grand Tour’, in An Historical Geography of Recreation and Tourism in the Western World 1540-1940 (Chichester:  John Wiley, 1996)

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period