ABSTRACT
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the vogue for travel literature provided large numbers of people with publishing possibilities, and women's writing about their travels increased accordingly. Journals or epistolary accounts of travelling which may or may not have originally been intended for publication offered women the possibility of documenting what they encountered on their travels in an informal and highly personal manner. There is a strong autobiographical element in most travel writing, since the story of the journey is narrated by the individual who undertook that journey in the first place. Middle-class travel writing is undoubtedly linked to the growth of tourism in the eighteenth century. The very term 'tourist' made its first appearance in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1800, with 'tourism' first listed in 1811. In contrast is the highly successful Diary of an Idle Woman in Italy by Frances Elliott, which was published in 1871.
