Richard Boyle Bernard's 'A Tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium' is a captivating travelogue that takes readers on a literary journey through various European countries. Written in the early 19th century, the book offers a unique perspective on the cultural landscapes of the regions visited, with detailed descriptions of the people, places, and customs encountered along the way. Bernard's writing style is eloquent and rich in detail, providing readers with a vivid portrayal of his travels and experiences. This book stands out in the context of travel literature of the time, offering a combination of personal reflections and informative observations that make it a valuable historical document. Through Bernard's narrative, readers can gain insights into the social and political climate of Europe during this period, as well as a deeper understanding of the cultural diversity of the regions explored. Richard Boyle Bernard's background as a diplomat and scholar likely influenced his writing of this book, bringing a level of expertise and insight to his travel accounts. His keen observations and thoughtful reflections make 'A Tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium' a compelling read for those interested in travel literature, European history, and cultural studies.

The Author's Effects: On the Writer's House Museum is the first book to describe how the writer's house museum came into being as a widespread cultural phenomenon across Britain, Europe, and North America. Exploring the ways that authorship has been mythologised through the conventions of the writer's house museum, The Author's Effects anatomises the how and why of the emergence, establishment, and endurance of popular notions of authorship in relation to creativity. It traces how and why the writer's bodily remains, possessions, and spaces came to be treasured in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as a prelude to the appearance of formal writer's house museums. It ransacks more than 100 museums and archives to tell the stories of celebrated and paradigmatic relics—Burns' skull, Keats' hair, Petrarch's cat, Poe's raven, Brontë's bonnet, Dickinson's dress, Shakespeare's chair, Austen's desk, Woolf's spectacles, Hawthorne's window, Freud's mirror, Johnson's coffee-pot and Bulgakov's stove, amongst many others. It investigates houses within which nineteenth-century writers mythologised themselves and their work—Thoreau's cabin and Dumas' tower, Scott's Abbotsford and Irving's Sunnyside. And it tracks literary tourists of the past to such long-celebrated literary homes as Petrarch's Arquà, Rousseau's Ile St Pierre, and Shakespeare's Stratford to find out what they thought and felt and did, discovering deep continuities with the redevelopment of Shakespeare's New Place for 2016.