Women, Travel and Identity

Emma Robinson-Tomsett is a freelance academic and History researcher and writer who completed her doctorate at Royal Holloway, University of London

• IntroductionPart I: The culture of female journeying1. The big luggage went a fortnight ago: making the journey abroad 2. Fashion plate heroines: imagining the female journeyer 3. No nice girl swears: advice, etiquette and expectationPart II: Journey practices4. Ordering the berth: the spaces of journeying5. Busy practising games: scrutiny and sociability6. Full of wickedness: romantic opportunity and sexual hazard?Part III: Journey identity7. Where her story begins: fashioning a journeyer identity Conclusion Appendix: Women Journeyers Bibliography Index

Women, Travel and Identity: Journeys by Rail and Sea, 1870-1940 offers a refreshing contribution to studies of women’s travel: as Robinson-Tomsett’s identifies, the experience of the ‘paying woman journeyer’ (3) has remained largely hidden from view. It is these everyday women, travelling for leisure and pleasure, who are brought to light in this study which seeks to explore how women constructed their identities as travellers in a period in which their statuses and roles, in public and private, were undergoing radical reformulations.