ABSTRACT

During the nineteenth century, rst a trickle, then a stream and then an avalanche of travel books about the Near East appeared all over the Western world but particularly in Britain. Most of these covered one small part of the region: Palestine – the Holy Land.1 As a result of this, over the course of the century Palestine became one of the fashionable holiday destinations for the wealthy, a phenomenon that generated even more travelogues. According to Bar-Yosef (2005: 68): “e number of individuals who were willing to risk their own assets just to have their travel accounts published … suggests that it was only by joining this endless textual procession that travellers felt they had truly experienced Palestine.”