Upstate Travels
Subtitle: British Views of Nineteenth-Century New York
By: edited and with an introduction by Roger Haydon.
Edition: 1st edition
Series: New York State Books
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: June 1982
Place of publication: Syracuse, NY
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 273
ISBN-13: 9780815601753; 9780815622703
Subjects: United States - State & Local - General; New York (State); Description and travel; History - U.S.; Sources; Country life; 19th century; British; History
Description: Award Winner. After the War of 1812 British travelers, intensely curious about the United States, poured across the Atlantic. Hundreds published their impressions in lively, quarrelsome books that infuriated and enchanted Americans and Britons alike. Most of these volumes have been out of print for a century or more. Here Haydon brings together 42 excerpts from one generation of these travelers' accounts, between 1815 and 1845, when New York State was a microcosm of the country.

The readings follow the period's most popular itinerary -- up the Hudson Valley through Albany and its environs on to the spas and the Champlain Valley, across the state via the Erie Canal, the Genesee Valley, and the Finger Lakes to the Niagra Frontier, and down into the Southern Tier -- to record in vivid detail the generation that saw New York State come to dominate the nation.