<\/p>\n
<\/u>If my endless accounts of literary stalking have inspired you to embark on your own visit to a writer\u2019s house, there is one vital item that you\u2019ll need to squeeze into your suitcase, if you\u2019ve not done so already. As I touched on in a much earlier post about the author Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see\u00a0https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/literarytourist\/?p=162<\/a>) sometime around the 1780s a new reading practice emerged: that of bringing books to re-read on the spot where they were set, or had been composed, or sometimes both. Originally this was the practice of the elite, but by the 1830s it had been adopted by a wider public. The evidence for this trend resides in private papers, in published accounts which represent the practice, and in the shape of publications designed to facilitate it. A Handbook for Travellers in Switzerland, and the Alps of Savoy and Piedmont <\/em>(1838), for instance, contained Rousseau, Byron, Voltaire, Gibbon and Germaine de Sta\u00ebl helpfully excerpted to fit in a pocket. The Handbook<\/em> provides, in the words of the author, a compendium of \u2018deathless associations\u2019 efficiently indexed to \u2018immortalised localities.\u2019 So, whichever \u2018immortalised locality\u2019 it is that you\u2019re off to on your trip, be sure to immerse \u00a0yourself fully in Victorian reading culture, by packing your copy of your favoured author\u2019s works.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If my endless accounts of literary stalking have inspired you to embark on your own visit to a writer\u2019s house, there is one vital item that you\u2019ll need to squeeze into your suitcase, if you\u2019ve not done so already. … Continue reading