A Happy Holiday : : English Canadians and Transatlantic Tourism, 1870-1930 / / Cecilia Morgan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UTP eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2015
• VerfasserIn: Morgan, Cecilia,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

One of the most revealing things about national character is the way that citizens react to and report on their travels abroad. Oftentimes a tourist's experience with a foreign place says as much about their country of origin as it does about their destination. A Happy Holiday examines the travels of English-speaking Canadian men and women to Britain and Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It describes the experiences of tourists, detailing where they went and their reactions to tourist sites, and draws attention to the centrality of culture and the sensory dimensions of overseas tourism. Among the specific topics explored are travellers' class relationships with people in the tourism industry, impressions of historic landscapes in Britain and Europe, descriptions of imperial spectacles and cultural sights, the use of public spaces, and encounters with fellow tourists and how such encounters either solidified or unsettled national subjectivities. Cecilia Morgan draws our attention to the important ambiguities between empire and nation, and how this relationship was dealt with by tourists in foreign lands. Based on personal letters, diaries, newspapers, and periodicals from across Canada, A Happy Holiday argues that overseas tourism offered people the chance to explore questions of identity during this period, a time in which issues such as gender, nation, and empire were the subject of much public debate and discussion.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- Introduction: Holidays, Happiness, and Transatlantic Tourism -- 1. Porters, Guides, and the Middle-Class Tourist: The Practices of Transatlantic Tourism -- 2. The Landscape of History and Empire, Part 1: Scotland -- 3. The Landscape of History and Empire, Part 2: England -- 4. 'Paddy's Grief and Native Wit': Canadian Tourists and Ireland -- 5. 'The Hot Life of London Is upon Us': Travel to the Imperial Capital -- 6. The Street, the Regatta, and the Orphanage: The Public and Social Spaces of Tourism in Britain -- 7. 'This Sight-Seeing Is a Strenuous Business': European Sojourns, Part 1 -- 8. Natural Wonders and National Cultures: European Sojourns, Part 2 -- 9. 'A Big Old Country Car, Speeding around a Winding Road': Transatlantic Tourism in the 1920s -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index