This book provides both a detailed survey of Canadian travel writing
in the nineteenth century and an unusual perspective on Canadian
cultural history. The Canadians who wrote about their experiences
abroad during the era of mass travel which followed the advent of the
steamship reveal much about themselves and their own country as
well.
Who were these travellers, why did they travel, and what did they
expect to see? In answering these questions, Eva-Marie Kroller draws
upon a wide variety of materials: novels, guide books, magazines,
newspapers, photographs, paintings, and previously unpublished letters
and diaries. The self-assured progress of the privileged Canadian
travellers often turned into introspective voyages of self-discovery.
For one thing, Europeans often mistook them for Americans, and many had
to ask themselves what it really meant to be Canadian. In addition, the
tone of moral earnestness which pervades the early travellers'
tales begins to give way to a certain world-weariness by the end. In
Canada and elsewhere, the 'tourist' was a new phenomenon at the
beginning of the period, but an accepted part of the modern world by
the end of it. Canadian Travellers in Europe will be required reading
for devotees of travel writing, but it is also a significant
contribution to nineteenth-century Canadian history.
