“The shadow, or the hope, of the hills”: The Victorian Mountain Experience

Abstract

The Victorian fascination with the Alps was rooted in the concept of the sublime, as defined by Burke and developed by the Romantics. The mountains aroused feelings of reverence for their spirituality and aes-thetic beauty, while demanding a healthy respect for the dangers inherent in precipice and crevasse. Ann C. Colley, in Victorians in the Mountains: Sinking the Sublime (Ashgate 2010), argues that beginning in mid-century, however, adherence to the notion of the sublime began to weaken as mountain landscape – and the Alps in particular – became more accessible. Victorians in the Mountains attempts to account for this shift in attitude, exploring the social and political forces that drove Victo-rian mountaineering and examining the particular relationship to the mountains of three literary figures. This review essay is both a considera-tion of and a dialogue with Colley’s study of the Victorian mountain ex-perience.