English Travellers of the Renaissance

This study opens a window onto a forgotten literary genre: the instructional essays that guided English gentlemen on their continental journeys during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By gathering rare, often unpublished pamphlets, the author shows how travel was presented not as a leisurely tour but as a vital component of a young man’s education, shaping his language skills, cultural awareness, and courtly manners.

Arranged chronologically, the narrative follows the rise of travel as a fashionable rite of passage and its gradual decline once universities began offering modern history and languages. Along the way readers encounter the sway of Italian decadence, the allure of Jesuit persuasion, the French model of deportment, and the early stirrings of the Grand Tour. Meticulous research in the Bodleian, the British Museum, and European libraries brings these voices back to life, offering a vivid portrait of an era when the road itself was the classroom.