Rita Singer

Aberystwyth University | AU · Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences

Visitors’ books not only trace developments in modern tourism, but they also reveal changes in the socio-cultural and language attitudes of travellers from all walks of life over prolonged periods of time. This article investigates messages in visitors’ books from Wales from the mid-nineteenth century up to the present and argues for their recognit...

Taking the development of picturesque tourism in Wales since the publication of William Gilpin’s Observations on the River Wye (1782) as point of departure, this article examines three Anglophone illustrated travel accounts by French tourists during the Romantic period, focusing on the co-occurrence of text and images as they may confirm, destabili...

Historically, tourism in Wales was invigorated by the reinvention of mountain scenery during the Romantic period when travellers gained new perspectives of the terrain from higher ground. It is also during this period that inns and guesthouses began keeping visitors’ books in which guests evaluated their surroundings and their hosts’ good services....

This introduction to the MLO special issue “Minoritised Languages and Travel” provides an overview of the pieces in this collection in context with historical travel accounts in German about nineteenth-century Wales. The contributions in this collection lay bare frictions between traveller and travelee as well as the inherent instability of social,...

Die Geschichte kontinentaleuropäischer Reiseliteratur über Wales wurde erst kürzlich als Kooperation zwischen Bangor University, dem University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies und Swansea University im interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekt European Travellers to Wales, 1750-2010 beleuchtet. Dabei entstand die Datenbank Accounts...

Book Reviews M. Wynn Thomas, The Nations of Wales 1890–1914 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). Pp. 323. Huw Osborne (ed.), Queer Wales: The History, Culture and Politics of Queer Life in Wales, Gender Studies in Wales (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016). Pp. 272. John Pikoulis, Alun, Gweno and Freda (Bridgend: Seren, 2015). Pp. 397...

Rob the Red-Hand is a manslayer who spends his life hiding away in the rough mountain uplands of Merionethshire. When he witnesses a gang of smugglers brutally assaulting young Janet Meredith, Rob steps from the shadows and helps his estranged nephew Reginald to free her from her kidnappers. When Romantic literature fell in love with the Scottish...

A light-hearted mother, a free-spirited noble patron and a blushing young sweetheart—young Twm Shôn Catti from Tregaron has it all. But one day, his mischievous temper gets the better of him and he is forced to become an outlaw. Taking to the road as Welsh incarnation of Robin Hood, Twm outwits many traps set by the arm of the law, lampoons his soc...

Set during the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century, Gladys of Harlech tells the story of the granddaughter of the last Welsh keeper of Harlech Castle. Fighting on the side of the House of Lancaster, Gladys and her family flee into hiding in the mountains after the castle falls into the hands of the rival Yorkists at the end of a long siege....

For the Welsh middle classes, the 1850s were defined by a continuous struggle against English stereotypes that imagined Wales as a nation of promiscuous drunkards, incapable of self-rule and a burden for Britain. Whereas the Welsh press aggressively rebuffed such frequent accusations as soon as they sprung up, it took another 10 years before anglop...

For centuries, continental Europeans have come to Wales for numerous reasons. During the Romantic period some came seeking a rural idyll, whilst others in the Victorian era travelled as industrial spies, and during times of war many refugees escaped to Wales to find shelter from persecution. Not only have continental Europeans left their traces amo...

Resources for KS2 & 3 that include information and interactive exercises based on works of art by refugees that came to Wales. They were produced as part of the AHRC-funded project European Travellers to Wales. http://hwb.wales.gov.uk/Resources/resource/95514aba-1550-4128-b5ad-f770739601c2/en

Since the 1980s German-language travel writing reflects a stable interest in the life and writings of Dylan Thomas. Predominantly, Swansea and Laugharne represent the heart and essence of ‘Dylan Thomas Country’ in these accounts. However, these travel writers also find the south Walian poet among the slate tips of Snowdonia and the abandoned copper...

German-speaking travellers have long shown great interest in Wales. In 1780, the Swiss painter Samuel Hieronymous Grimm explored Wales in search of picturesque landscapes and ruined castles and churches. Throughout the nineteenth century, Wales was at the forefront of industrial progress and invention and German travel writing was rife with ecstati...

About two hundred years ago, the advent of steam-powered railways and the improvement of the road system not only transformed travelling from a pastime of luxury to a commodity, but also attracted more and more European travellers to the previously less accessible parts of Wales. It is from around this time that a Swiss mountaineer found himself sp...

http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/2013/04/29/strange-new-today

Was ist eigentlich der Orient? Auf der Landkarte sucht man das Wort jedenfalls vergeblich, trotzdem gibt es orientali­sche Märchen, Musik und Mode. Aber schon bei „Chicken tikka“ und Döner Kebab wird es schwierig. Diese scheinbar simple Frage nach dem Orient ist also bei genauerer Be­trachtung plötzlich gar nicht mehr so einfach zu beant­worten. D...