ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which experiences of alterity were challenged when the object of the traveller’s gaze was viewed and discussed by a working-class traveller. It considers how working travellers wrote about the work of others as a spectacle; shows how they wrote about experiences of being permitted access to the houses of their social superiors as observers; and how they reacted when faced with the otherness of poverty in the Celtic fringes of Britain. The chapter explains the main features of the conventional Home Tour, considering the role of the picturesque tour through Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, before turning to the representation of England. It deals with a discussion of servants’ representations of what was seen as ‘the Celtic fringe’: the fascination with some of Britain’s wilder scenery and the growing appreciation of the picturesque landscape and its inhabitants.
