Making of a Cultural Landscape

Professor John K. Walton is IKERBASQUE Research Professor at the Department of Contemporary History, University of the Basque Country, Leoia, Bilbao, Spain and Jason Wood, is Director of Heritage Consultancy Services, Lancaster, UK.

• Contents: Foreword; Preface; Part I Lake District History and Identity: The Lake District landscape: cultural or natural?, Susan Denyer; Setting the scene, John K. Walton; The landscape encountered by the first tourists, Angus J.L. Winchester; Landscape and society: the industrial revolution and beyond, John K. Walton; American tourists in Wordsworthshire: from ’national property’ to ’national park’, Melanie Hall. Part II Lake District Tourism Themes: The imaginative visitor: Wordsworth and the Romantic construction of literary tourism in the Lake District, Keith Hanley; ’Inhabited by strangers’: tourism and the Lake District villa, Adam Menuge; The origins and development of mountaineering and rock-climbing tourism in the Lake District, c. 1800-1914, Jonathan Westway; Sport, tourism and place identity in the Lake District, 1800-1950, Mike Huggins and Keith Gregson. Part III Lake District Tourism Case Studies: Claife station and the picturesque in the Lakes, Sarah Rutherford; Furness Abbey: a century and a half in the tourists’ gaze, 1772-1923, Jason Wood; The post-industrial picturesque? Placing and promoting marginalised Millom, David Cooper; Select bibliography; Index.

"The book is alert to ironies, conflicts, and complications within the development of tourism as a cultural practice, and between tourism and other claims of the landscape. Chapters acknowledge some of the social exclusions in the making of the Lake District as a tourist landscape." - The AAG Review of Books, Stephen Daniels, University of Nottingham, UK"...for any advocate of landscape history and devotee of the Lake District, it is a must read. The bulk of the book is the elegantly told story of the central role the Lake District has played in the evolution of the British preoccupation with and love of landscape." - Dame Fiona Reynolds DBE, Master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge and former Director-General of the National Trust "Overall, the essays in this volume are full of interest, both substantive and methodological." - Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology"... this book is interesting, informative, and a good read adding an additional dimension to our knowledge of the cultural processes underpinning the development of the Lake District as a tourism destination." - The Journal of Historical Geography "... this book is an excellent read for anyone interested in the Lake District, the history of tourism, cultural landscapes and national parks." - Landscape History "This book effectively explores the complex making of the destination with richly written essays providing perspectives from a variety of academic fields (including history, literature, and museum studies). The book successfully identifies and illustrates how the ’key themes in the Lake District’s history and identity’ (p. xv) have worked both individually and together to create the Lake District as a distinctly unique tourist destination." - Journal of Heritage Tourism "To be welcomed as full of variety and of historical perspectives with which most literary critics will be unfamiliar, but which allow the poetry and prose of the Lakes to be approached with an informed, as well as quizzical eye, while still demonstrating its significant cultural and geographical legacy." - European Romantic Review