Tourism, Landscape, and the Irish Character: British Travel Writers in Pre-Famine Ireland

The book explores the contrasting perceptions of Ireland by British visitors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, highlighting the tension between the picturesque landscape and the poverty encountered. It delves into how rituals of Irish Catholicism and cultural practices, such as funeral wakes, were viewed as peculiar by tourists from England, Wales, and Scotland. Their writings reflect a belief that the visible hardships of rural Ireland symbolized moral shortcomings, revealing deeper biases and misunderstandings about Irish identity and culture.