ABSTRACT
This book has advanced a study of Italian and Australian travel literatures from 1770 until the beginning of the twentieth century and encapsulated it in a primary discourse regarding authority. Not long after the demise of the Continental Grand Tour of the British aristocratic male and, with it, of its leading travel reportages, Italy began attracting Anglo-Australian travellers and writers, whose trajectories were initially imitative of Grand Tours. During the ensuing 50 years, mimicking Anglo-Australian Grand Tourists gave way to nationalistic and skilled Australians, who reached the Bel Paese to fashion themselves as travellers or professionals. Just as the British had first colonised both Australia and the travel destination of Italy, Italy was “rediscovered” by the Australian travellers and tourists of the nineteenth century as part of a reclamation of their British heritage.
