Book Description

The book is a comprehensive study of British travel in the United Provinces during the Stuart Period and largely based on journals and correspondence never before published. After a discussion of travel journals and correspondence as a literary genre with conventions of its own, the book focuses on the more concrete activities of the tourist: transport, accommodation and sightseeing. A large number of guidebooks provided the necessary information and helped the tourist to write his observations on Holland and the Dutch. Letters by Edward Browne (1644-1708), passages from the journal of John Locke (1632-1704) and the financial accounts of the third Earl of Orrery (1670-1703) take the reader through most of the provinces and give a first-hand impression of what travel was like for various categories of tourists in those days. This book is indispensable for all scholars of Anglo-Dutch relations in this period who are interested in learning about day to day experiences of Britons visiting Holland.