ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to recreate the world of eighteenth-century travel writing in order to illuminate its central role in shaping Britain's emerging sense of national identity. It addresses national identity, authorship, and gender in more detail, with reference to recent scholarship which has provided crucial contexts for the present investigation. The book then examines a selection of texts from the prolific and argumentative 1760s which present various energetic assertions of national and authorial masculinity. It also explores how the intricate literary and ideological fabric of eighteenth-century travel writing is further complicated by cultural shifts and political upheavals during French Revolution. The early stages of the French Revolution witness an optimistic re-visioning of national character and affinities: the French appropriation of that great British principle, liberty, prompts a celebration of international sympathies.
