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

By: Jocelyn Anderson

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Hardcover | 22 February 2018

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Hardcover
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24 x 1.6

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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.

Industry Reviews

For anyone who has ever wondered how Chatsworth, Pemberley, or Downton Abbey could belong so emphatically to the public-how English country houses (both real and imagined) have, as cultural treasures, come to be possessed by the nation-this book is essential reading. With an extraordinary range of primary sources, Anderson engagingly demonstrates the importance of English country houses as crucial tourist destinations in the 18th century, underscoring the importance of these houses for all sorts of things: not only the history of country house architecture, but also 'heritage' more broadly, collections generally, art collections in particular, and-perhaps most importantly-British conceptions of elite property as extending into the public realm of ownership. It is an immensely satisfying account of a fascinating story.
Craig Ashley Hanson, Associate Professor of Art History, Calvin College, USA, and author of The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism (2009)

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