The Cypriot village of Lefkara, pictured here and in the previous two posts, is an old village of stone buildings that have been beautifully restored. Known for its lace, its tiny hilly streets are lined with shops selling the exquisite handmade embroidery (along with imported, manufactured reproductions.) The road leading to town is lined with … Read more about Romantic representations in guidebook writing: case study #2
Romance or reality: what do travellers really want to read in guidebooks? Cyprus is dotted with delightful villages of winding lanes and atmospheric stone houses sprawling down hillsides in woody valleys. Sturdy old ladies can be seen carting bundles of wood down the street on their backs and old men ride donkeys through town, the … Read more about Romantic representations in guidebook writing: case study #1
So why is it that guidebooks romanticize destinations and that we’re much more likely to read the unpleasant truths about a place in poetry than we are in a travel guide? A travel editor’s argument might go, do readers really want to read about ugly places and the social problems of a destination they are … Read more about Romanticism versus reality: what do travellers really want?
The Romantic English poet William Wordsworth was carrying a copy of a travel guide as he did a walking tour of the Wye valley in 1798 when he composed the lyrical poem Tintern Abbey. The guidebook was William Gilpin’s ‘Observations on the River Wye’. In his poem, Wordsworth paints a portrait of the abbey ruins … Read more about The romance of poetry – and guidebooks
Travel writer, artist, teacher, and reverend, William Gilpin obsessively collected drawings and sketched, and, as a student at Oxford in 1748, self-published ‘A Dialogue upon the Gardens at Stow in Buckinghamshire’. With practical tips for travellers on how they could get the most out of their visits to the country and best enjoy the scenery, … Read more about Guidebooks to ‘the picturesque’: creating a new generation of traveller