Ladies of the Grand Tour
Subtitle: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Publisher: HarperCollins; HarperCollins Publishers
Published: November 6, 2001
Language: eng
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780060185435
First sentence: UNBEKNOWN TO MARY BERRY, two days before she wrote to her confidant Bertie Greatheed in Gottingen, Admiral Nelson's fleet had destroyed Napoleon Bonaparte's army in the battle of the Nile, quashing the French Egyptian expedition and effectively ending French plans to aggravate Britain further by thrusting at India.
Description: "According to the 1747 publication The Art of Governing a Wife, women in Georgian England were to "lay up and save, look to the house; talk to few and take of all within." However, some women broke from these directives and took up the distinctly male privilege of traveling to the Continent to develop mind, spirit, and body.".

"For many the Grand Tour - often under taken in great parades of coaches laden with servants, trunks, and furniture - became an intellectual and romantic rite of passage. The landscape, health spas, salons, and social scene of Enlightenment Europe provided a wealth of glamorous, revolutionary, and therapeutic experiences from which many ladies returned "the best informed and most perfect creatures."".

"Brian Dolan leads us into the hearts and minds of the ladies through their stories, thoughts, and court gossip, recorded in journals, letters, and diaries. Ladies of the Grand Tour creates a mesmerizing portrait of a previously overlooked slice of eighteenth-century life."--BOOK JACKET.