Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores Wordsworth’s extraordinary influence on the tourist landscapes of the Lake District throughout the age of railways, motorcars and the First World War. It reveals how Wordsworth’s response to railways was not a straightforward matter of opposition and protest; his ideas were taken up by both advocates and opponents of railways, and through their controversies had a surprising impact on the earliest motorists as they sought a language to describe the liberty and independence of their new mode of transport. Once the age of motoring was underway, the outbreak of the First World War encouraged British people to connect Wordsworth’s patriotic passion with his wish to protect the Lake District as a national heritage – a transition that would have momentous effects in the interwar period, when popular motoring paradoxically brought a vogue for open-air activities and a renewal of romantic pedestrianism. With the arrival of global tourism, preservation of the cultural landscape of the Lake District became an urgent national and international concern. This book explores how patterns of tourist behaviour and environmental awareness changed in the century of popular tourism, examining how Wordsworth’s vision and language shaped modern ideas of travel, self-reliance, landscape and environment, cultural heritage, preservation and accessibility.
Trade Review‘For its rigorous research and elucidation of the impact of transport upon the evolving experience of landscape and tourism from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, Yoshikawa’s work offers both an insightful and significant contribution to current scholarship.’
Jules Gehrke,
Journal of British Studies 'Yoshikawa’s archival work, as ever, is outstanding, and her claims are generally so well grounded as to seem almost obvious once the evidence is presented ... Yoshikawa’s book allowed us to take imaginative journeys while marking advancements in the thriving subdisciplines of Romantic literary geography.'
Paul Westover,
The Wordsworth Circle‘Saeko Yoshikawa in her new William Wordsworth and Modern Travel: Railways, Motorcars and the Lake District, 1830–1940 includes chapters… with an abundance of fascinating information, anecdotes, and illustrations.’ Eric C. Walker, European Romantic Review
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Wordsworth and Railways
2. The Railway Controversy in Wordsworth's Lake District
3. The Arrival of Motorcars
4. Romantic Motorists, Romantic Cyclists
5. The First World War and the Lake District
6. Post-War Motoring in the Lake District, 1920s-30s
7. Wordsworthian Tourism in the Interwar Period
Epilogue: 'Access for All'
