The Rise of the Devon Seaside Resorts, 1750-1900
The Rise of the Devon Seaside Resorts, 1750-1900

Author: John F. Travis

Publisher: University of Exeter Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9780859893923

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The first comprehensive study of the emergence of Devon's seaside resorts. Relating the development of these resorts to the wider processes of social and economic change, it explains why early tourists were drawn to the remote Devon coast and shows how fishing villages were transformed into fashionable watering places. Themes covered include bathing rituals and sea-water drinking, health cures and cholera epidemics, sophisticated amusements and improving recreations, paddle-steamers and excursion trains.

The Invention of the English Landscape
The Invention of the English Landscape

Author: Peter Borsay

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2023-07-27

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1350031666

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Since at least the Reformation, English men and women have been engaged in visiting, exploring and portraying, in words and images, the landscape of their nation. The Invention of the English Landscape examines these journeys and investigations to explore how the natural and historic English landscape was reconfigured to become a widely enjoyed cultural and leisure resource. Peter Borsay considers the manifold forces behind this transformation, such as the rise of consumer culture, the media, industrial and transport revolutions, the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Gothic revival. In doing so, he reveals the development of a powerful bond between landscape and natural identity, against the backdrop of social and political change from the early modern period to the start of the Second World War. Borsay's interdisciplinary approach demonstrates how human understandings of the natural world shaped the geography of England, and uncovers a wealth of valuable material, from novels and poems to paintings, that expose historical understandings of the landscape. This innovative approach illuminates how the English countryside and historic buildings became cultural icons behind which the nation was rallied during war-time, and explores the emergence of a post-war heritage industry that is now a definitive part of British cultural life.

The Lure of the Beach
The Lure of the Beach

Author: Robert C. Ritchie

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 0520215958

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A human and global take on a beloved vacation spot. The crash of surf, smell of salted air, wet whorls of sand underfoot. These are the sensations of the beach, that environment that has drawn humans to its life-sustaining shores for millennia. And while the gull’s cry and the cove’s splendor have remained constant throughout time, our relationship with the beach has been as fluid as the runnels left behind by the tide’s turning. The Lure of the Beach is a chronicle of humanity's history with the coast, taking us from the seaside pleasure palaces of Roman elites and the aquatic rituals of medieval pilgrims, to the venues of modern resort towns and beyond. Robert C. Ritchie traces the contours of the material and social economies of the beach throughout time, covering changes in the social status of beach goers, the technology of transport, and the development of fashion (from nudity to Victorianism and back again), as well as the geographic spread of modern beach-going from England to France, across the Mediterranean, and from nineteenth-century America to the world. And as climate change and rising sea levels erode the familiar faces of our coasts, we are poised for a contemporary reckoning with our relationship—and responsibilities—to our beaches and their ecosystems. The Lure of the Beach demonstrates that whether as a commodified pastoral destination, a site of ecological resplendency, or a flashpoint between private ownership and public access, the history of the beach is a human one that deserves to be told now more than ever before.