Between the late seventeenth and the early nineteenth century, the possibilities for travelling within Britain became increasingly various owing to improved transport systems and the popularization of numerous tourist spots. Women Writing the Home Tour, 1682-1812 examines women's participation in that burgeoning touristic tradition, considering the ways in which the changing face of British travel and its writing can be traced through the accounts produced by the women who journeyed England, Scotland, and Wales during this important period. This book explores female-authored home tour travel narratives in print, as well as manuscript works that have hitherto been neglected in criticism. Discussing texts produced by authors including Celia Fiennes, Ann Radcliffe and Dorothy Wordsworth alongside the works of lesser-known travellers such as Mary Morgan and Dorothy Richardson, Kinsley considers the construction, and also the destabilization, of gender, class, and national identity through chapters that emphasize the diversity and complexity of this rich body of writings.

Contents: Introduction: women on the home tour; Part 1 Travels and Texts: Considering the Travelogue Form: Pursuing order: the organizational strategies of women's travel texts; 'Coming before the public in the character of ... a tourist': travellers' textual choices. Part 2 Perspectives on the Landscape: Detachment and Destabilization in Home Tour Writing: Framing the landscape; Breaking the frame. Part 3 Travelling Identities: Travel Theory and the Emergence of British Tourism: Home tour spectacles; Encountering alterity; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.