Irish Cultures of Travel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 1-19

3. ‘Brethren and Sisters Going Abroad’: Irish Travel Writing Beyond the Grand Tour

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 21-65

4. Towards ‘Mass’ Irish Tourism: Infrastructures of Travel and of Public Discourse

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 67-92

5. Utilitarians, Nationalist Pilgrims and Time Travellers: Carrying and Seeing Ireland Abroad

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 93-130

6. Continental Catholic Spaces Seen Through Irish Eyes

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 131-164

7. Sisters Abroad: Constructing the Irish Female Tourist

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 165-181

8. Home or Abroad? ‘West Britons’ and Continental Travel

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 183-207

9. ‘Yes, The Newspapers Were Right’: Revisiting Tourism in Joyce’s ‘The Dead’

   • Raphaël Ingelbien

   Pages 209-223

10. Conclusion

    • Raphaël Ingelbien

    Pages 225-232

11. Back Matter

    Pages 233-252

    PDF

This book analyses travel texts aimed at the emergent Irish middle classes in the long nineteenth century. Unlike travel writing about Ireland, Irish travel writing about foreign spaces has been under-researched. Drawing on a wide range of neglected material and focusing on selected European destinations, this study draws out the distinctive features of an Irish corpus that often subverts dominant trends in Anglo-Saxon travel writing. As it charts Irish participation in a new ‘mass’ tourism, it shows how that participation led to heated ideological debates in Victorian and Edwardian Irish print culture. Those debates culminate in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’, which is here re-read through new discursive contextualizations. This book sheds new light on middle-class culture in pre-independence Ireland, and on Ireland’s relation to Europe. The methodology used to define its Irish corpus also makes innovative contributions to the study of travel writing. 

• Irish literature
• Travel writing
• James Joyce
• Print culture
• Tourism
• British and Irish Literature

“Irish Cultures of Travel introduces readers to a wealth of original, primary research that nuances how we classify British travel writing in the long nineteenth century. It is therefore crucial reading not only to Irish cultural and literary historians, but also to a wider range of nineteenth-century travel writing scholars for its innovative methodologies and fruitful intersections.” (Rebecca Butler, Studies in Travel Writing, Vol. 22 (3), 2018)

“This book is an important contribution to the study of the massification of tourism at a time of technological, infrastructural, and social change in Irish society. Charting a range of European destinations, Ingelbien expertly highlights increased Irish participation in the modern phenomenon of democratized travel and the emergence of a new constituency of tourists that results in evolving strategies for Irish travel.” (Anne O'Connor, Journeys, Vol. 19 (01), June, 2018)

“The reach of Ingelbien’s research is impressive, and includes a welcome discussion of Irish women travellers, such as the antiquarian Margaret Stokes, within its brief. … Raphael Ingelbien’s deft and elegant study offers a lively evocation of pre-independence Irish tourist culture, and within that, an informed and timely portrait of nineteenth-century Ireland’s assertive and mobile middle class.” (Eve Patten, Review of Irish Studies in Europe – RISE, Vol. 2 (1-4), March, 2018)

“This is a well-researched and persuasive book. It is well placed within the historiography on travel and tourism and is a useful contribution to that field. … a well-written book, which demonstrates sound scholarship and makes thought-provoking contributions to several discussions within the historiography of Irish studies and the history of tourism and travel.” (Katherine Haldane Grenier, Victorian Studies, Vol. 60 (03), 2018)

“Ingelbien provides an illuminating chronicle of Ireland’s relationship to travel, charting it through Irish prescriptions of religion, nationalism, feminism and recreation. What this book ultimately presents is an intriguing account of Ireland’s search for identity, seeking out the exotic in order to ‘see Ireland first’.” (Louisa Carroll, Books Ireland, Issue 374, August, 2017)

“Raphaël Ingelbien’s Irish Cultures of Travel: Writing on the Continent, 1829-1914 is an engaging, highly readable, and frequently insightful treatment of a fascinating and hitherto neglected area of travel and tourism studies. … this highly readable book will be useful for students and a pleasure for scholars as well as general readers whose interests include travel, Irish studies, or even post-colonialism generally.” (Donald I. Ulin, breac, breac.nd.edu, June, 2017)

“Refreshingly jargon-free, international and interdisciplinary in scope, Ingelbien’s reader-orientated approach to Irish travels is well-substantiated, thoughtful and convincing, while his focus on public discourse broadens considerably our understanding of periodical literature. Quite simply, this is an innovative and scholarly text, and the blend of historical, biographical and textual analysis will not only secure its position within the field of Irish Studies, or Travel and Tourism cultures, but within interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies more generally.” (Glenn Hooper, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)

• Department of Literature, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

  Raphaël Ingelbien

Raphaël Ingelbien is Reader in Literary Studies at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He is the author of Misreading England: Poetry and Nationhood since the Second World War (2002), and has published widely on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and Irish writing in various journals and edited collections. 

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