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Dr. Brian Dolan- Ladies of the Grand Tour
 rated by SceneOne
"" in the Daily Mail (UK)
Ranked #12 on the Best-Seller List (Whitaker BookTrack, twelve weeks ending 8 September 2001, non-fiction history)
Wasn't the Grand Tour that great cultural phenomenon in the eighteenth century that turned boys into learned English gentlemen? The men's-only rite of passage allowing them to sow their wild oats on their route to gentilty? No. At least, as Dolan demonstrates here, it wasn't 'men only' and the 'Grand Tour' was not, for all those engaged in it, emblematic of the conquest of masculinity over adolescence. Drawing from eighteenth-century diaries, correspondence, and published travelogues, this book allows us to listen to what the 'ladies of the Grand Tour' had to say about how Continental travel affected their lives. Throughout the book we meet a number of 'bluestocking' women and discover how their trips abroad helped them to break away from the 'domestic sphere' and exercise their minds, enjoy social independence, and cultivate new tastes. In the end, the Grand Tour can no longer simply be synonymous with a gentleman's finishing education, but must also be seen as a significant journey that widened women's personal and intellectual horizons.
A provocative thesis about unconventional and adventurous women. Here's what the newspapers said:
"Brian Dolan offers many fascinating glimpses into a previously overlooked slice of 18th-century life."
- Val Hennessy, , 'Critic's Choice', 3 August 2001.
"A captivating book written with passion and energy."
- Roger Katz, , 'Holiday Hits', 7 July 2001
"A diverting and an instructive read, and one which lends comic depth to the modern touristic experience."
- Susanna Rustin, , 21 July 2001
"One of the most fascinating aspects of Brian Dolan's historical study of the English lady abroad is the hypocrisy with which she was viewed by her own sex. Married women should always be 'forbidden fruit', wrote one mid-18th-century author, Frances Brooke. This, she explained, was only her English view, 'for my ideas on this head change as soon as I land at Calais.' She was anxious to warn others of this volatility. Coquetry was all very well for the French. They knew how to flirt without breaking their hearts. The English lady was more delicate. Endowed with precious 'sensibility', she must be protected from the danger of continental lovemaking. ... What shines out in a finely researched and presented work is the uncommon fortitude of these early travellers."
- Miranda Seymour, , 24 June 2001
"It is a fascinating subject - the range of women's activities from the bluestocking 'Lady Wits' to the gambling addicts in the circle of the Duchess of Devonshire. ... Many of the women included here excelled at the art of correspondence, and their letters and journals are filled with descriptive commentary and vivid evocations of what they saw. ... [Some] understood that as a woman her penned thoughts would not be treated with as much reverence as if she had been born a man, but who cares, she would write anyway. [Hester Piozzi] was not the only woman to do so, and Brian Dolan must take credit for resurrecting so many of them."
- Kate Chisholm, , 24 June 2001
"The art of letter writing in 18th-century England was, Brian Dolan explains, an essential part of an 18th-century education, and creating a literary legacy was a key attraction of the Grand Tour. The author has drawn widely on such letters for this whistlestop account of the travels and impressions of 18th-century women. ... Although only a few women could afford the cost of the Tour, their example was infectious. Dolan gives a good account of the lives of some extraordinary trend-setting female travellers, quoting from the letters and diaries which became an important literary art of the time as well as prototypes of the modern guidebook. ... [T]he women are allowed to speak out for themselves - which is more of an encouragement then they were usually given when they were alive."
- Sally Emerson, , 17 June 2001
"What a fab party of women to be stranded with at an airport terminal gate. High-born (salonista Lady Holland, 'the only really undisputed monarchy in Europe') ... horribly real (Helen Williams, in fear of the guillotine in the Luxembourg Palace) and wildly fictional (Hannah Hewitt, the 'Female Crusoe', cast away en route to India in a 1792 novel). They take the waters at Spa and Aix; they take lovers in Paris and Naples; they shop and ship by the crate; they adopt riding habits and are called 'Sir' ... I've been prompted by [Brian Dolan] to think all week about Mary Wollstonecraft, pregnant by her American lover, in a hideaway outside Paris during the Terror. There she penned her proto the-personal-is-political sentence - 'The face of things, public and private, vexes me' - and worried that her anguish about the disintegrating revolution might be 'tormenting or perhaps killing, a poor little animal, about whom I am grown anxious and tender, now I feel it alive'. I wish she could be sitting in the window seat next time I fly."
- Vera Rule, , 9 June 2001.
"As you set off on holiday this summer, spare a thought for the adventurous women of 18th-century England: trapped not so much beneath a glass ceiling as in a bell jar. ... These were not frivolous sun- seekers but well-educated bluestockings with a thirst for experience, who held strong opinions and were not slow to express them. ... It is the stories of these women, set against the culture of the time, that Dolan sets out to explore; characters such as the writers Mary Berry and Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth and Hester Thrale, whose diaries and journals vividly capture their fascination with (and sometimes disapproval of) European ways. Their voices bring the book alive ..."
- Joanna Symons, , 9 June 2001.
"The women travellers were from all classes and many parts of the country, with every variety of education and none. Many would never even have acknowledged each other, and were many years apart. Some were self-taught: brave girls work hard at their Latin by candlelight, dreaming of impossible Italy, and others well set-up with drawing masters paid an astonishing £300 a year to prepare them for foreign galleries and rich encounters. ... There were novelists, poets, letter-writers, 'ladies of letters', bluestockings, 'salonniaires', philosophers and political journalists. They had different goals: bored girls stuck in the country with no money wanted adventure, other girls who wanted to master languages (though it is mortifying to find how many of them already spoke good French, thanks perhaps to cheap, French-emigre governesses). There were girls passionate for personal liberty and for the Liberty of France. These were fiercely criticised for taking an interest in the politics of another country. Most overstayed their time, returned home, wrote enormous, unremarkable books about their experiences. Some narrowly missed the guillotine."
- Jane Gardam, , 16 June 2001.
"Brian Dolan tells the stories of many women who did want to travel to Florence and Rome, to Germany and France, to anywhere but home. ... In the late 18th century women of all classes craved a broadening of experience. It's no accident that one of the best travel books, Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark (1796), was by Mary Wollstonecraft. [But travelling] abroad didn't always work out. ... But in a constricted present, the possibilities of the future and the foreign country meant the same to these women: a place where you could know more, do more, be more."
- Margaret Reynolds, , 20 June 2001.
Find out more about Ladies of the Grand Tour by visiting http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/ or, preferably, buying the book.
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