Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel-Writing, 1770-1840

The decades between 1770 and 1840 are rich in exotic accounts of the ruin-strewn landscapes of Ethiopia, Egypt, India, and Mexico. Yet it is a field which has been neglected by scholars and which - unjustifiably - remains outside the literary canon. In this pioneering book, Nigel Leask studies the Romantic obsession with these ''antique lands'', drawing generously on a wide range of eighteenth- an...