Canadian Travellers in Europe, 1851-1900 (Hardcover)

This book provides both a detailed survey of Canadian travel writing in the nineteenth century and an unusual perspective on Canadian cultural history. The Canadians who wrote about their experience abroad during the era of mass travel which followed the advent of the steamship reveal much about themselves and their own country as well. Who were these travellers, why did they travel, and what did they expect to see? In answering these questions, Eva-Marie Kroller draws upon a wide variety of materials: novels, guide books, magazines, newspapers, photographs, paintings, and previously unpublished letters and diaries. The world expositions were major tourist attractions (the author devotes a chapter to this subject), and so were Queen Victoria's Golden and Diamond Jubilees. Canadian travellers preferred Britain and France over all other countries, closely followed by Italy and Palestine. Kroller pays special attention to the imperial sub-text implicit in the accounts of nineteenth-century travellers. In general, English Canadians wanted to confirm the supremacy of the British Empire, while French Canadians deplored events in Republican France, preferring the past imperial glories. The self-assured progress of the privileged Canadian travellers often turned into introspective voyages of self-discovery. For one thing, Europeans often mistook them for Americans, and many of these travellers had to ask themselves what it really meant to be Canadian. In addition, the tone of moral earnestness which pervades the early travellers' tales begins to give way to a certain world-weariness by the end. In Canada and elsewhere, the "tourist" was a new phenomenon at the beginning of the period, but an accepted part of the modern world by the end of of it. "Canadian travellers in Europe" will be required reading for devotees of travel writing, but it is also a significant contribution to nineteenth-century Canadian history. Eva-Marie Kroller is an Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia.