Language is still a relatively under-researched aspect of the Grand Tour. This book offers a comprehensive introduction enriched by the amusing stories and vivid quotations collected from travellers' writings, providing crucial insights into the rise of modern vernaculars and the standardisation of European languages.

In 1819, the Murray family set out on one of the last Grand Tours before railways forever changed the way people travelled. The eldest daughter of the Second Earl of Mansfield, Lady Frederica Murray (later Stanhope, as she married James Hamilton Stanhope, the youngest son of the 3rd Earl of Stanhope) kept a diary on the tour, which this book explores in detail. The diary has never been published (not even mentioned in any of the Grand Tour literature) and is a fascinating and essential look at the Murray/Mansfield family, and Europe at the time. Frederica was a deeply observant traveller and noted down numerous picturesque and historical details; she was also very open and sometimes even cutting in her opinions when she came across something or someone she did not like. Frederica’s diary shows a very mature 19-year-old with clear opinions on art, literature and the world around her. This book will therefore be interesting for scholars of travel, Grand Tours, and Regency England and its society, as well as anyone with an interest in travel and history.

This volume, tenth in the Research Correspondence Series of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, documents the long friendship between Boswell and Sir William Forbes This volume, tenth in the Research Correspondence Series of the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, collects the letters exchanged between lawyer, diarist, and biographer James Boswell and Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, eminent Scottish banker, civic improver, philanthropist, literary and cultural patron, and lay leader of Edinburgh's "English Episcopal" community. Forbes served as Boswell's most valued Scottish advisor, to whom he would often turn for personal, financial, moral, and religious guidance, and whom he would name executor of his estate and co-guardian of his children. The volume includes a total of 111 comprehensively annotated letters, few of which have appeared previously in print, between Forbes and Boswell and other correspondents. It illuminates in particular the period in which Boswell moved from Edinburgh to London and wrote his major books, The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson and The Life of Samuel Johnson.

`For forty years I have defended the same principle: freedom in everything, in religion, in philosophy, in literature, in industry, in politics - and by freedom I mean the triumph of the individual.' Constant thus summarized his beliefs at the end of his life. A political theorist and a passionate defender of individual liberty, he was also the author of one of the greatest French novels of psychological insight, Adolphe. In a major new biography Dennis Wood traces the development of Constant as a writer centrally preoccupied with the problematics of freedom, not only in the fields of politics and religious belief but also in his own troubled relationship with several women.

The author of more than 2,000 books and pamphlets, Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) was one of the most prolific writers of the eighteenth century, and also one of the wittiest and most insightful. This unique collection of over 800 of Voltaire’s wisest passages and choicest bons mots runs the gamut on topics from adultery to Zoroaster, in both English and French. Drawing from a wide range of his publications, private letters, and remarks recorded by his contemporaries, The Quotable Voltaire includes material never before gathered in a single volume. English translations appear alongside the original French, and each quote is thoroughly indexed and referenced, with page numbers for both the first known publication edition of each entry and the most recent edition of Voltaire’s works. The book also features over 400 quotes about Voltaire, including commentary by eighteenth-century luminaries like Samuel Johnson, Catherine the Great, Casanova, and John Adams, as well as an eclectic assortment of modern-day personages ranging from Winston Churchill and Jorge Luis Borges to Mae West and Mike Tyson. Lavishly illustrated with nearly three dozen images of Voltaire-related art, this collection opens with a scholarly essay that recounts the great man’s life and reflects on his outsized influence on Western culture. Whether you are a Voltaire scholar or a neophyte, The Quotable Voltaire is the perfect introduction to a brilliant mind.

"Born in Edinburgh, the 'Athens of the North', a Scot who hated living in Scotland and nourished a lifelong love affair with London, Boswell was biographer, journalist, laird, advocate, social lion, incurable rake, lover, life of the party, traveller, steadfast friend, endearing charmer, exhibitionist fool, and drunken sot. In this moving biography, Peter Martin assesses Boswell's literary achievements and uncovers the pulsating and dynamic world he thrived in, from the royal courts and the drawing rooms of fashionable ladies and gentlemen to the fleshpots of London's unsavoury underworld and the chambers of the insane. He also poignantly reveals a man in agony, easily misunderstood, relentlessly plagued by hypochondria or melancholia, buffeted like a straw in the wind by a multitude of anxieties and 'horrible imaginings'."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved