The Origins of the Grand Tour / 1649-1663 / The Travels of Robert Montagu, Lord Mandeville, William Hammond and Banaster Maynard

Focusing upon three previously unpublished accounts of youthful English travellers in Western Europe, Dr Brennan reassesses the early origins of the cultural phenomenon known as the 'Grand Tour' and shows how the basis of the long-term English fascination with the 'Grand Tour' was firmly rooted in the mid-Tudor and early-Stuart periods. The outbreak of the English Civil War during the late-1640s acted as a powerful stimulus to this kind of travel for male members of both royalist and parliamentarian families, as a means of distancing them from the social upheavals back home as well as broadening their intellectual horizons. This study of the experiences of three young Englishmen also considers the various forms in which their travel records have survived, including personal diaries, family letters and formal prose records, and how these texts should now be interpreted not in isolation but alongside the diverse collections of prints, engravings, curiosities, coins and antiquities assembled by such travellers.