Wolverhampton BTW

About Women’s Travel Writing 1780-1840

History, Scope, and Aims
Credits and Acknowledgements
Short Titles and Abbreviations
How to Cite the Database
Contact Details
Copyright

History, Scope, and Aims

Based on some 20 years research by the Principal Investigator, Dr Benjamin Colbert, Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: A Bio-Bibliographical Database (DWTW) was launched on 10 July 2014 at the Chawton House Library conference, New Horizons: Reassessing Women's Travel Writing 1600-1800. It is part of a larger project (British Travel Writing) aiming to provide a definitive bibliographical database of travel writings published in Britain and Ireland between 1780 and 1840, including translations. The full database contains approximately 4,000 entries, of which 222 can be identified as involving women as authors or contributors, a figure that belies the importance of the period in the development and professionalization of women’s travel writing.

For the purposes of DWTW and the British Travel Writing project more generally, travel writing is here defined in terms of genre (narratives, guidebooks, illustrated letterpress plate books, topographical descriptions, and collections); witness (accounts derived from actual tours); and place of publication (Britain and Ireland). Travel novels, poetry, and other forms of fiction have generally been excluded, although an exception has been made for travel storybooks for children that are based on an author’s actual tour or contain abridgements of third-party tours (de facto collections). Other exclusions include:

The majority of entries in DWTW concern women as principal authors, co-authors, or substantial contributors, but other roles such as editor or illustrator are included so long as contributions to the book are not peripheral. Women’s roles as translators of travel books are also included, as are translations of women’s travel writings. Entries for men include all these roles, the prime desiderata being to fully represent bibliographically and biographically the travel writings to which women have contributed. In all, DBTW contains 217 authorial role entries, 155 of them for women.

Each text entry contains links from author names to short biographies, many based on original archival research. The title, publisher's imprint, and printer's colophon of each item have been transcribed accurately and in full from inspected texts (see 'Copy inspected') or reconstructed from available bibliographical resources (see 'Sources'). For titles, capitalization is standardized following the MLA Style Guide and line breaks are not indicated. Title page epigraphs, if any, are reproduced and identified in the Notes; title page engravings are also described. Titles that do not include author attributions can be assumed to have been published anonymously, unless otherwise indicated in the Notes. Entries also include a physical description of the book ('Format'), its Genre, a unique BTW record number, and the main Region(s) covered by the book's content. In addition to title page epigraphs and illustrations, the Notes also include further editions (including foreign printings and translations), dedications, and reviews.

As suggested above, DWTW remains a work in progress and will be updated periodically as and when new information about authors and texts becomes available. Project updates and features will appear on the News & Events page as well as the CTTR 'transculture' blog.

Credits and Acknowledgements

The project team comprises Dr Benjamin Colbert (Principal Investigator) of the Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research (CTTR), University of Wolverhampton, and Professor Anthony Mandal (Database Consultant), of the Centre for Editorial and Intertextual Research (CEIR), Cardiff University.

Over the years, the project has benefited greatly from discussions with the CEIR team, including Professor Mandal, Professor Bill Bell (formerly Director of the Centre for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh), Professor David Skilton, and Professor Julia Thomas. While at CEIR and later the University of Edinburgh, Professor Peter Garside’s interest in and support for the project have played no small part in establishing it on its present footing.

An earlier MySQL database prototype was developed by Paul Smith, BA Hons Computer Science, University of Wolverhampton, and now of AuraQ, and we gratefully acknowledge his work here. We are especially grateful to Chris Veness of Movable Type Ltd., who designed the version that was published online in 2014 and has overseen all subsequent modifications.

At Wolverhampton, we would also like to thank Dr Alix Bergeret of the Department of Computer Sciences; Martin Evans, former IT Technician for the Faculty of Arts; and Matthew Green, Rachel Candlin, and Jason Musgrove of IT Services, for their collective help in furthering the development of the database in its earliest stages and for creating its first server host.

The University of Wolverhampton's Faculty of Arts recognized the potential of the database with a research development grant that paid for its initial design and launch. A British Academy/Leverhulme Trust small research grant (2016-18) funded improvements in the user interface as well as the main archival research underpinning many of the biographical sketches of the travel writers. The Centre for Transnational & Transcultural Research has also funded primary research as well as database maintenance and development. We are also grateful to European Romantic Review for enabling the database's migration to its present server home at Heroku.

Numerous individuals have responded to queries and corresponded over the contents of the database, sometimes supplying new information, suggesting improvements, or promoting its use. We would like to thank, in particular: James Anthony-Edwards, Stephen Bending, Jan Borm, Pamela Buck, Stephen Bygrave, Stephen Clark, Gillian Dow, David Ellis, Peter Ellis, Michael Freeman, Thomas Furniss, Pere Gifra Adroher, Karl Traugott Goldbach, Sebastian Groes, Betty Hagglund, Glyn Hambrook, Michael Heafford, Peter Hicks, Ludmilla Kostova, Karl E. Kusserow, Kirsten Leuner, John McComie, Gerald Maclean, Joanne Major, Neville Marsh, Nicholas Mason, Lucy Morrison, Sarah Murden, Francesco Paradiso, William Heber Percy, Kenneth Quickenden, Chris Read, Shef Rogers, Anne Rouhette, Helen Rowe, Stuart Semmel, John Strachan, Paul Sutcliffe, Helen Symington, John Theakstone, Carl Thompson, Nicola Watson, Hilary Weeks, Frank Wilson, and Tim Youngs.

Short Titles and Abbreviations

Research and Reference Works

Abbey : Abbey, John Roland, Travel in Aquatint and Lithography, 1770-1860, from the Library of J. R. Abbey: A Bibliographical Catalogue, Repr. edn, 2 vols (Folkestone: Dawsons, 1972) [Vol. 1: World, Europe, Africa; Vol. 2: Asia, Oceania, Antarctica, America]

BBT : John P. Anderson, The Book of British Topography: A Classified Catalogue of the Topographical Works in the Library of the British Museum Relating to Great Britain and Ireland. By John P. Anderson, with a New Introduction by Professor Jack Simmons, University of Leicester (East Ardsley: EP Publishing Ltd, 1976)

BWW : Joanne Shattock, The Oxford Guide to British Women Writers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)

B&D : Elizabeth A. Bohls and Ian Duncan, eds, Travel Writing 1700-1830: An Anthology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

Brand : C. P. Brand, ‘A Bibliography of Travel Books Describing Italy Published in England, 1800-1850’, Italian Studies 11 (1956): 108-17

CHLS : Chawton House Library Series: Women's Travel Writings. Series Editors: Stephen Bending and Stephen Bygrave.

Coolidge : W. A. B. Coolidge, Swiss Travel and Swiss Guide Books (London: Longman, Green, and Co., 1889)

Corvey : Catalogue of English Travel Literature in the Micro-Edition of the Fürstliche Bibliothek Corvey (Olms Neue Medien, 1998)

Cox : Edward G. Cox, A Reference Guide to the Literature of Travel, 3 vols (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1935-49)

DLB : Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978- )

DBITI : A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, comp. John Ingamells (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997)

GKress : Goldsmith-Kress Microfilm Series

Lawrence : Karen R. Lawrence, Penelope Voyages: Women and Travel in the British Literary Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994)

Leask : Nigel Leask, Curiosity, and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770-1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)

LTE : Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia, ed. Jennifer Speake, 3 vols (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003)

McVeagh : John McVeagh, Irish Travel Writing: A Bibliography (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1996)

Mitchell : Arthur Mitchell, ‘A List of Travels, Tours, Journeys, Voyages, Cruises, Excursions, Wanderings, Rambles, Visits, Etc., Relating to Scotland’. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland 35 (1900-01)

ODCB : Dictionary of Canadian Biography, University of Toronto/Université Laval, Online, 2003–

ODNB : Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Online, 2004

PC : R. S. Pine-Coffin, Bibliography of British and American Travel in Italy to 1860 (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1974)

Robinson : Jane Robinson, Wayward Women: A Guide to Women Travellers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)

TEE : Travels, Explorations and Empires: Writings from the Era of Imperial Expansion 1770-1835, edited by Tim Fulford and Peter J. Kitson, 2 sets of 4 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2001-2)

Theakstone : Theakstone, John, An Alphabetical Bibliography of Books by Victorian and Edwardian Women Travellers Published between 1837 and 1910, Online, 2002

Turner : Katherine Turner, British Travel Writers in Europe 1750-1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001)

Weber 1 : Shirley H. Weber, Voyages and Travels in the Near East Made during the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1952)

Weber 2 : Shirley H. Weber, 'Voyages and Travels in Greece, the Near East and Adjacent Regions Made Previous to the Year 1801', Catalogue of the Gennadius Library 2 (Princeton: The American School of Classical Studies in Athens, 1953)

Databases

ASP : Alexander Street Press

BL19thC : British Library 19th Century Collection, JISC Historical Texts

ECCO : Eighteenth-Century Collections Online

ESTC : English Short Title Catalogue (incl. Eighteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue)

Google : Google Books [Full-Text Database]

HT : HathiTrust [Full-Text Database]

IA : Internet Archive [Full-Text Database]

NSTC : Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue, CD-ROM

OCLC : OCLC WorldCat

Other

2o : Folio

4o : Quarto

8o : Octavo

12o : Duodecimo

attrib. : attributed (to / by)

c. : circa

edn : edition

fl. : flourished

fr. : from

front. : frontispiece

lst. : listed in

n.p. : no publisher

n.s. : new series

p.; pp : page; pages

publ. : published

rev. : Reviewed by

s. : series

t.p. : title page

trans. : translated (by)

v. / vol. : volume

var. : variant

x : not in (e.g. xNSTC)

Locations (Libraries)

ANL : Austrian National Library

BSL : Bavarian State Library

Bodl : Bodleian Library

BL : British Library

ColUL : Columbia University Library

DUL : Duke University Library

GI : Getty Institute

Harv : Harvard Library

Hunt : Huntington Library

LC : Library of Congress

LPL : Lyon Public Library

NLS : National Library of Scotland

NLW : National Library of Wales

NUL : Newcastle University Library

NYPL : New York Public Library

PSUL : Pennsylvania State University Library

PUL : Princeton University Library

SNL : Swiss National Library

SRLF : Southern Regional Library Facility, UCLA

SUL : Stanford University Library

TrC : Trinity College Library, Dublin

UAlb : University of Alberta Library, Canada

UCB : University of California, Berkeley

UCL : University of Chicago Library

UIa : University of Iowa Library

ULau : University of Lausanne Library

UMich : University of Michigan Library

UMinn : University of Minnesota Library

UT : University of Toronto Library

UVa : University of Virginia Library

UWM : University of Wisconsin - Madison

YUL : Yale University Library

How to Cite the Database

General references to the database should employ the following formula:

Benjamin Colbert, Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: A Bio-Bibliographical Database, designer Movable Type Ltd. < https://www.british-travel-writing.org/ > [date accessed].

Subsequent citations can be shortened to

Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840, or DWTW.

Referring to specific records within the Database

Benjamin Colbert, Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: A Bio-Bibliographical Database, designer Movable Type Ltd. < https://www.british-travel-writing.org/texts/{record}> [date accessed]: BTW Record No.

e.g.

See the record for Mary Boddington’s Sketches in the Pyrenees (1837), in Benjamin Colbert, Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: A Bio-Bibliographical Database, designer Movable Type Ltd. < https://www.british-travel-writing.org/texts/1024 > [20 June 2020]: BTW1024.

with subsequent citations as follows:

See the record for Sophie Dixon’s A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion (1830), Database of Women’s Travel Writing, 1780-1840: BTW1047.

See the record for Sophie Dixon’s A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion (1830), DWTW: BTW1047.

Contact Details

For more information or to make comments/suggestions, please contact:

Dr Benjamin Colbert
Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research
Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Science
University of Wolverhampton
Wulfruna Street
WV1 1LY
United Kingdom

Email: B.Colbert@wlv.ac.uk

© Copyright of DWTW belongs to Dr Benjamin Colbert of the Centre for Transnational and Transcultural Research, University of Wolverhampton, whose research provides the core data; copyright in the structure and design of the database belongs to Movable Type Ltd. Access is provided solely for the purposes of research, teaching, private study, and general interest. Prior written permission is required for any alteration or redistribution of the database, or a substantial portion thereof in any form, including electronic; prior written permission is also required for any commercial exploitation of the database’s contents. Proper acknowledgement should be made when citing or quoting materials. For details on citing materials found in DWTW, please follow this link.