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A ROOM WITH A VIEW: VISUALISING THE SEASIDE, c. 1750–1914*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2013

Peter Borsay
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Abstract

The expansion in consumption that marked the British economy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was based not only on a growth in material goods, but also of experientially and culturally rich products such as leisure and tourism. Underpinning the latter of these, and of key importance in the rise of the seaside resort, was the process of visualisation. The ‘tourist gaze’ became a commodity in its own right, geared around environmental and social subjects, and facilitated by a transformation in the content and reproductive potential of visual culture and an engineering of resorts to deliver views.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 23 , December 2013 , pp. 175 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2013 

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Footnotes

*

This is my part of a presentation, jointly delivered with Dr Louise Miskell, on ‘Visualizing the Resort: Pictorial Representations of Tourists and their Destinations c. 1750–1914’. I am grateful for the comments and observations made by my colleague and those in the audience.

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