The High Road: Romantic Tourism, Scotland and Literature, 1720-1820

For romantic literature, tourism served as a form of inspiration for talented and influential writers. The High Road situates romantic tourism in Scotland by studying texts that richly demonstrate relevant cultural developments and stand out as compelling intersections of history and personality. Six accounts, significant for their literary quality as well as the largely canonical status of their authors, distinguish a span of one hundred years during which tourism, carrying various romantic overtones, became the significant feature of modernity that it remains today. Glendening focuses on four Scottish literary tours originally produced for Georgian audiences by English authors Daniel Defoe, Samuel Johnson, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and John Keats. He also provides an important alternative perspective by discussing the fictional Scottish tours of Scottish authors Tobias Smollett and Walter Scott.