Enlightenment Travel and British Identities

"Thomas Pennant of Downing, Flintshire (1726-1798), naturalist, antiquarian and self-styled 'Curious Traveller, ' published accounts of his pioneering travels in Scotland and Wales to wide acclaim between 1769 and 1784. He directly inspired Johnson, Boswell and hundreds of subsequent travellers. In Wales, he is known as the 'Father of Cambrian Tourism.' A keen observer and cataloguer of everything from plants, birds and minerals to ancient monuments and modern fisheries, he corresponded with a vast network of leading natural scientists and antiquarians. The 'Tours, ' widely read and much imitated, indisputably helped bring about a richer, more complex understanding of the multiple histories and cultures of Britain at a time when 'Britishness' was itself a fragile and developing concept. This collection seeks to address the comparative neglect of Pennant's travel writing by bringing together researchers from literary criticism, art history, Celtic studies, archaeology and natural history. Attentive to the visual as well as textual aspects of his topographical enquiries, it rehabilitates a neglected aspect of the Enlightenment in relation to questions of British identity, offering a new assessment of an important chapter in the development of domestic travel writing"—