• “The Devil may take Snowdon”, or: inscribing touristic disappointment in Victorian visitors’ books

    Author(s):
    Rita Singer (see profile)
    Date:
    2022
    Group(s):
    Cultural Studies, English Literature, History, Imperialism & Exploration, Victorian Studies
    Subject(s):
    Travel, Wales, History, Welsh literature, Emotions
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    tourism, Wales, visitors' books, Travel Writing, Victorian culture, Welsh history, History of Emotions
    Permanent URL:
    https://doi.org/10.17613/y9wa-gk64
    Abstract:
    Historically, tourism in Wales was invigorated by the reinvention of mountain scenery during the Romantic period when travellers gained new perspectives of the terrain from higher ground. It is also during this period that inns and guesthouses began keeping visitors’ books in which guests evaluated their surroundings and their hosts’ good services. The participatory nature of these albums encouraged inscribers not only to provide factual reviews, but also to compose occasional poetry, humorous vignettes of a day’s travel or satirical character sketches of fellow travellers and locals. The Snowdon visitors’ books evidence travellers’ expectations and experiences of ascending the highest mountain in Wales. In the study of nineteenth-century travel writing, messages particularly by non-professional writers reveal how the quality of professional tour guides, commercial infrastructure, the weather and the food sold in the huts shaped the overall experience of Snowdon as a touristic highlight or disappointment.
    Notes:
    This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    https://doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2022.2063102
    Publisher:
    Taylor & Francis
    Pub. Date:
    10 May 2022
    Journal:
    Studies in Travel Writing
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    1 year ago
    License:
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

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