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Case 2: Europe and the Grand Tour 1
Exhibition curator: Katie Sambrook
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Underground houses in Serbia from : Edward Brown. A brief account of some travels in Hungaria, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli. London: printed by T.R. for Benjamin Tooke, 1673. Rare Books Collection D915.B8 |
Edward Brown. A brief account of some travels in Hungaria, Servia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Thessaly, Austria, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, and Friuli. London: printed by T.R. for Benjamin Tooke, 1673.
Rare Books Collection D915.B8
Edward Brown (1644-1708) was a highly regarded doctor, who served as Physician-in-Ordinary to Charles II and was later appointed president of the Royal College of Physicians. He was a keen and observant traveller, whose account of his journeys "in some remote parts of Europe", written in a clear and lively style, conveys to the reader his own insatiable interest in the countries he visited. The plate displayed here shows the wells and underground houses of a region of what is now Serbia and which then formed part of the Ottoman Empire. The author describes his visit:
As we travelled by them, the poor Christians would betake themselves to their holes, like Conies. So that, to satisfie our curiosities, we were fain to alight, and enter their houses, which we found better than we expected,divided into partitions, with wooden chimneys, and a window at the further end, a little above the ground ...
Olfert Dapper. Description exacte des isles de l'archipel. Amsterdam: George Gallet, 1703
Rare Books Collection FOL. H220 DAP
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Delos from : Olfert Dapper. Description exacte des isles de l'archipel. Amsterdam: George Gallet, 1703. Rare Books Collection FOL. H220 DAP |
Dapper's account of the Greek islands was first published in his native Dutch in 1688. This French translation, printed in Amsterdam in 1703, re-uses the engraved plates of earlier Dutch editions, as can be deduced from the presence of Dutch captions to some of the plates. Dapper's work is as much a lament for the present state of Greece's past glories as it is an architectural and archaeological guide:
... ces isles, dis-je, avec leurs grandes & belles villes, sont reduites en de tristes masures & en un monceau de pierres.
The plate of Delos on display, with its pathetic heaps of fallen masonry, overgrown with weeds and now the home of snakes and lizards, perfectly complements the tone of the text.
Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. A voyage into the Levant. London: printed for D. Browne ... [etc.], 1718
Rare Books Collection DS47 TOU
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| Grotto at Antiparos from Joseph Pitton de Tournefort. A voyage into the Levant. London: printed for D. Browne ... [etc.], 1718. Rare Books Collection DS47 TOU |
In 1699 Tournefort, a noted botanist, was asked by Louis XIV of France to undertake a voyage of scientific observation to the countries of the Mediterranean. His account of this voyage, first published in French in 1717, was quickly translated into English and found a ready readership among the sons of the gentry and aristocracy and works. This was the age of the Grand Tour and works like Tournefort's, containing descriptions and illustrations of the sites associated with classical myth and history, were popular additions to a gentleman's library. The plate on display shows the grotto at Antiparos, one of the Cyclades.
John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Houghton. A journey through Albania, and other provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople. Second edition. London: printed for James Cawthorn, 1813.
Rare Books Collection DR425 HOB
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Athens from : John Cam Hobhouse, Baron Houghton. A journey through Albania, and other provinces of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople. Second edition. London: printed for James Cawthorn, 1813. Rare Books Collection DR425. HOB |
Hobhouse, friend and companion of Byron, made his journey across Europe to Constantinople in 1809-1810 in the company of the poet. Both had recently left Trinity College Cambridge and this journey was their Grand Tour. They reached Athens, pictured here, in December 1809 and stayed there for three months, during which time, Hobhouse states:
... there was not, I believe, a day of which we did not devote a part to the contemplation of the noble monuments of Grecian genius, that have outlasted the ravages of time, and the outrages of barbarous and antiquarian despoilers.
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