Traveller
or Tourist?
Could you spot a tourist in a crowd? Do they hold a map or a camera and block the path of angry locals? Is that the hint of sunburn on their face?
What about a traveller? Do the same rules apply?
At what point does going on holiday transform into going travelling?
The books, letters and manuscripts in this exhibition reveal that debates about travellers and tourists have existed since at least the 1700s, growing increasingly fierce as travel became accessible to more people.
Never been stuck behind a tourist in a crowd? You are lucky. Or maybe try looking back from time to time, it could be you…
What type of Traveller
are you?
1. Idle
2. Inquisitive
3. Lying
4. Proud
5. Vain
6. Splenetic
7. Travellers of Necessity
8. Delinquent & Felonious
9. Unfortunate & Innocent
10. Simple
11. Sentimental
Writing at a time when foreign travel was becoming more common, particularly among the rich, Laurence Sterne attempts here to highlight the distinctions between different types of travellers. For Sterne, the person who knows where they fit on this list will be ‘one step towards knowing himself’.
Laurence Sterne, A sentimental journey through France and Italy by Mr. Yorick. In two books. Göttingen: Printed by I.C. Dietrich, 1787. DUL SC 08231
'…they have afflicted our generation with one desperate evil; they have covered Europe with Tourists…'
Blackwood’s Magazine, 1848. Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons. DUL SC 03688
The idea of the tourist was firmly established by the mid-1800s. With the railway and the steamboat becoming commercially available and widely used, domestic and foreign travel for pleasure slowly became more affordable.
A new tourist industry developed at the same time, offering accommodation and entertainment to entice more visitors.
Those who saw themselves as sophisticated travellers mocked this new form of mass tourism and tried to discredit it. Beneath the surface, these criticisms of the new tourists reveal anxieties about changing social structures and fears about the elite losing power and privilege.
Want to know more about the travels of British upper class?
Click here to visit our Preparing for a Journey exhibition which includes guidebooks for The Grand Tour.
'Going by rail road I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely ‘being sent’ to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel.'
John Ruskin, Modern Painters Volume 3 (1856), DUL SC+ 00423
'Antiquity inspires insatiable curiosity'
Combining a genuine travel account with fictional characters, Corinne, or Italy celebrates some of the more established values of foreign travel. The author sees it as a chance to study the ancient world and learn from their civilisation, dismissing the commercial and hedonistic aspects of mass tourism.
Madame De Stael, Corinne, or Italy. Translated by Isabel Hill; with metrical versions of the odes by L.E. [Laetitia Elizabeth] Landon; and a memoir of the authoress. London: R. Bentley, 1833. DUL SC 05999
Want to know more about the blurred line between travel fact and travel fiction?
Click below to change paths and visit our Flights of the Imagination exhibition.
'Antiquity inspires insatiable curiosity'
Combining a genuine travel account with fictional characters, Corinne, or Italy celebrates some of the more established values of foreign travel. The author sees it as a chance to study the ancient world and learn from their civilisation, dismissing the commercial and hedonistic aspects of mass tourism.
Madame De Stael, Corinne, or Italy. Translated by Isabel Hill; with metrical versions of the odes by L.E. [Laetitia Elizabeth] Landon; and a memoir of the authoress. London: R. Bentley, 1833. DUL SC 05999
Madame De Stael, Corinne, or Italy. Translated by Isabel Hill; with metrical versions of the odes by L.E. [Laetitia Elizabeth] Landon; and a memoir of the authoress. London: R. Bentley, 1833. DUL SC 05999
Want to know more about the blurred line between travel fact and travel fiction?
Click below to change paths and visit our Flights of the Imagination exhibition.
Syntax Error
This illustrated poem satirises the growth of domestic travel in Britain in the 1800s. Doctor Syntax is the epitome of an ignorant tourist, escaping his mundane life in search of the romanticised beauty of the countryside. Over-eager to sketch the landscape, he slips on a rock and tumbles into a lake.
William Combe, Tour of Doctor Syntax in search of the picturesque. London: R. Ackermann, 1819. DUL SC 08091
Travel Guides for a
New Type of Tourist
Best known for her work on social reform, Harriet Martineau also wrote several domestic and international travel guides, including works on Egypt and the United States.
Aimed at middle class tourists traveling by train, this guide combines lyrical descriptions of the area with practical information on transport and accommodation. Martineau welcomed the tourists, seeing their benefit to the local economy.
Martineau lived in Tynemouth, in the north east of England, for 5 years before moving to the Lake District in 1845 and writing this guide.
Harriet Martineau, A complete guide to the English Lakes … illustrated from drawings by T. L. Aspland and W. Banks. 3rd edition, edited and enlarged by Maria Martineau. Windermere: John Garnett. London: Whitaker & Co., Hamilton, Adams & Co.; Longman & Co.; Simkin, Marshall, & Co., 1866. DUL SC 05651
Learn more about Harriet Martineau in this video produced by Durham University student Faye Thompson
Learn more about Harriet Martineau in this video produced by Durham University student Faye Thompson
The advertisements included in Martineau’s guide aim to entice tourists into future journeys through Britain. This Edinburgh hotel offers a saloon, coffee room and top quality wines and cuisine.
'Our horror is the professional tourist; the woman who runs abroad to forage for publication; reimports her baggage bursting with a periodical gathering of nonsense; and with a freight of folly, at once empty as air and heavy as lead, discharges the whole at the heads of a suffering people.'
Blackwood’s Magazine, 1848.
Edinburgh: William Blackwood & Sons. DUL SC 03688
Across the centuries, travel opportunities for women have been much more limited than those available to men. Moving into the 1900s there were still debates over whether this was an acceptable activity, again revealing fears over changing roles in society.
Women often relied on family connections or their husband’s employment to travel abroad, but those who had the opportunity gained a rare chance for independence and exciting new experiences. Historic women travellers were never idle or complacent tourists, their journeys broke from tradition, expanding geographic and social horizons.
Travel Writing Pioneer
In this, the first travel account by a woman published in English, the author describes their time spent in Russia working for an English merchant’s family. Justice was forced to move abroad due to the scandal and disgrace of her husband’s arrest and trial for stealing valuable books from Cambridge University.
Despite the unfortunate circumstances that led to this journey, and the fact that some didn’t believe her account, Justice praises the pleasure and value of foreign travel.
Elizabeth Justice, A voyage to Russia describing the laws, manners, and customs, of that great empire, as govern'd, at this present, by that excellent princess, the Czarina. Shewing the beauty of her palace, the grandeur of her courtiers, the forms of building at Petersburgh, and other places: with several entertaining adventures, that happened in the passage by sea, and land... York: printed by Thomas Gent, 1739. DUL Routh 59.E.13
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (to travel)
In these letters to her lover, Gilbert Imlay, pioneer of women’s rights Mary Wollstonecraft explores how her travels abroad have informed and affirmed her social views. Here we see Wollstonecraft lambast the treatment of women in Sweden and later explaining how her life as a woman sharpens how she sees the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard., 1796. DUL Winterbottom L130
Ysabel Birkbeck’s Diary, 1909
This illustrated diary chronicles the author’s visit to Japan to visit her sister who was married to a missionary based there. Travelling with her mother and second sister, we see Birkbeck capturing interesting observations and collecting souvenirs, similar habits to a traveller of any era.
Travelling by ocean liner between Canada and Japan offered the chance to sample the vast and elaborate menu shown here.
SAD 865/8. Images reproduced with permission from the Hunter family.
Travel Writing Pioneer
In this, the first travel account by a woman published in English, the author describes their time spent in Russia working for an English merchant’s family. Justice was forced to move abroad due to the scandal and disgrace of her husband’s arrest and trial for stealing valuable books from Cambridge University.
Despite the unfortunate circumstances that led to this journey, and the fact that some didn’t believe her account, Justice praises the pleasure and value of foreign travel.
Elizabeth Justice, A voyage to Russia describing the laws, manners, and customs, of that great empire, as govern'd, at this present, by that excellent princess, the Czarina. Shewing the beauty of her palace, the grandeur of her courtiers, the forms of building at Petersburgh, and other places: with several entertaining adventures, that happened in the passage by sea, and land... York: printed by Thomas Gent, 1739. DUL Routh 59.E.13
Elizabeth Justice, A voyage to Russia describing the laws, manners, and customs, of that great empire, as govern'd, at this present, by that excellent princess, the Czarina. Shewing the beauty of her palace, the grandeur of her courtiers, the forms of building at Petersburgh, and other places: with several entertaining adventures, that happened in the passage by sea, and land... York: printed by Thomas Gent, 1739. DUL Routh 59.E.13
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (to travel)
In these letters to her lover, Gilbert Imlay, pioneer of women’s rights Mary Wollstonecraft explores how her travels abroad have informed and affirmed her social views. Here we see Wollstonecraft lambast the treatment of women in Sweden and later explaining how her life as a woman sharpens how she sees the world.
Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard., 1796. DUL Winterbottom L130
Mary Wollstonecraft, Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. London: Printed for J. Johnson, St. Paul's Church-Yard., 1796. DUL Winterbottom L130
Ysabel Birkbeck’s Diary, 1909
This illustrated diary chronicles the author’s visit to Japan to visit her sister who was married to a missionary based there. Travelling with her mother and second sister, we see Birkbeck capturing interesting observations and collecting souvenirs, similar habits to a traveller of any era.
Travelling by ocean liner between Canada and Japan offered the chance to sample the vast and elaborate menu shown here.
SAD 865/8. Images reproduced with permission from the Hunter family.
SAD 865/8. Images reproduced with permission from the Hunter family.
'I haven’t been everywhere,
but it’s on my list.'
Susan Sontag
What is it that truly separates a traveller from a tourist?
For many people today, it means looking beyond the pages of a guidebook and behind the doors usually only open to locals to experience something authentic and transformational.
We can also see this adventurous approach in historic travellers. The examples here show the desire to take the road less travelled and even witness history in the making.
'To catch the ideas of the moment'
Setting off for France to record the details of the country’s economy, Arthur Young inadvertently found himself caught up in the dawning of the French Revolution. Rather than returning home, he committed to accurately reporting on the events, speaking with Revolutionaries in Paris and witnessing attacks on the elites at the Palace of Versailles.
Arthur Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the kingdom of France. Dublin : Printed for Messrs. R. Cross, P. Wogan, L. White, P. Byrne, A. Grueber, J. Moore, J. Jones, W. Jones, W. M'Kenzie, and J. Rice., 1793. DUL SC 11968
Visiting the Bastille
Unlike Young, Helen Maria Williams visited Paris specifically to learn about the events of the French Revolution and report on its progress. The first stop for this adventurous traveller was the Bastille Prison, which had been stormed and liberated from the control of the monarchy during the revolution.
Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France; containing a great variety of original information concerning the most important events that have occurred in that country in the years 1790, 1791, 1792, and 1793. Dublin : Printed by J. Chambers, 5, Abbey-Street., 1794. DUL SC 10557
Looking For America
Charles Dickens travelled frequently and often wrote about his journeys. In this work, written while on a lecture tour across the USA, Dickens visited poor houses, asylums, factories, and prisons. Privately, Dickens complained that these visits were a sanitised part of a standard tourist itinerary shielding him from the real America.
This unsatisfying experience, clouded by the unwanted and fanatical attention he received as a celebrity author, profoundly changed his relationship with the country and he did not return for over 20 years.
Charles Dickens, American notes for general circulation. Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun., 1842. DUL SC 05857
'To catch the ideas of the moment'
Setting off for France to record the details of the country’s economy, Arthur Young inadvertently found himself caught up in the dawning of the French Revolution. Rather than returning home, he committed to accurately reporting on the events, speaking with Revolutionaries in Paris and witnessing attacks on the elites at the Palace of Versailles.
Arthur Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the kingdom of France. Dublin : Printed for Messrs. R. Cross, P. Wogan, L. White, P. Byrne, A. Grueber, J. Moore, J. Jones, W. Jones, W. M'Kenzie, and J. Rice., 1793. DUL SC 11968
Arthur Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the kingdom of France. Dublin : Printed for Messrs. R. Cross, P. Wogan, L. White, P. Byrne, A. Grueber, J. Moore, J. Jones, W. Jones, W. M'Kenzie, and J. Rice., 1793. DUL SC 11968
Visiting the Bastille
Unlike Young, Helen Maria Williams visited Paris specifically to learn about the events of the French Revolution and report on its progress. The first stop for this adventurous traveller was the Bastille Prison, which had been stormed and liberated from the control of the monarchy during the revolution.
Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France; containing a great variety of original information concerning the most important events that have occurred in that country in the years 1790, 1791, 1792, and 1793. Dublin : Printed by J. Chambers, 5, Abbey-Street., 1794. DUL SC 10557
Helen Maria Williams, Letters from France; containing a great variety of original information concerning the most important events that have occurred in that country in the years 1790, 1791, 1792, and 1793. Dublin : Printed by J. Chambers, 5, Abbey-Street., 1794. DUL SC 10557
Looking For America
Charles Dickens travelled frequently and often wrote about his journeys. In this work, written while on a lecture tour across the USA, Dickens visited poor houses, asylums, factories, and prisons. Privately, Dickens complained that these visits were a sanitised part of a standard tourist itinerary shielding him from the real America.
This unsatisfying experience, clouded by the unwanted and fanatical attention he received as a celebrity author, profoundly changed his relationship with the country and he did not return for over 20 years.
Charles Dickens, American notes for general circulation. Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun., 1842. DUL SC 05857
Charles Dickens, American notes for general circulation. Leipzig: Bernh. Tauchnitz Jun., 1842. DUL SC 05857
So the question remains, are you a traveller or are you a tourist? Do you follow the crowd, or do you look beyond the shiny surface of the world to seek out unique experiences?
Maybe the question doesn’t really matter. Is the knowledge gained by travellers any more valuable than that gained by tourists?
Perhaps the real value of any journey, long or short, wild or mundane, is in the power it has for your outlook on life to change and the impact on how you see the world.
Is this the end of your journey with us? If so, let us know what you think of the exhibition by leaving a comment below or taking a minute to complete our visitor survey.
LINK to survey
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