Tourists and travellers : women's non-fictional writing about Scotland 1770-1830

In this dissertation I consider the travels, and the travel and other non-fictional writings, of five women who travelled within Scotland during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century: the anonymous author of A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland; Sarah Murray (later known as Sarah Aust); Anne Grant of Laggan, Dorothy Wordsworth; and Sarah Hazlitt. During this period, travel and tourism in Scotland changed radically from a time when there were few travellers and little provision for those few, through to Scotland's emergence as a fully organised tourist destination. Simultaneous with these changes came changes in writing. I examine the changes in the ways in which travellers travelled in, perceived and wrote about Scotland during the period 1770-1830. I explore the specific ways in which five women travel writers represented themselves and their travels. I investigate the relationship of gender to the travel writings produced by these five women, relating that to issues of production and reception as well as to questions of discourse. Finally, I explore the relationship between the geographical location of travels and travel writing.