Travel and Transformation: Exploration, Tourism, and the Threat of Disease in Nineteenth-Century Travel

Abstract

The implications and effects of the growing popularity of travel in nineteenth-century Britain are the subjects of books by Jessica Howell (Exploring Victorian Travel Literature), Michele Strong (Travel and the ‘Civilisation’ of the Victorian Working Classes), and Tim Youngs (Beastly Journeys: Travel and Transformation at the Fin de Siecle). The three studies offer novel approaches to telling the story of nineteenth-century travel: as mass educational experience for the working classes (Strong), as imperialist exploration of lands Europeans feared for reasons of health and wellbeing (Howell), and travel as a form of “metamorphic” writing that explored fears of human regression through contact with alien lands and cultures(Youngs). These studies expand notions of what constitutes “travel” and why travel should be seen in its double role as a disruptive harbinger of a troubling modernity in the late nineteenth-century and as an inviting experience of exciting confrontation with cultural novelty.