The experience of Idling in Victorian travel texts, 1850--1901

"This book brings together theories of spatiality and mobility with a study of travel writing in the Victorian period to suggest that 'idleness' is an important but neglected condition of subjectivity in that era. Contrary to familiar stereotypes of 'the Victorians' as characterized by speed, work, and mechanized travel, this books asserts a counter-narrative in which certain writers embraced idleness in travel as a radical means to 're-subjectification' and the assertion of a 'late-Romantic' sensibility. Attentive to the historical and literary continuities between 'Romantic' and 'Victorian', the book reconstructs the Victorian discourse on idleness. It draws on an interdisciplinary range of theorists and brings together a fresh selection of accounts viewed through the lens of cultural studies as well as accounts of publication history and author biography. Travel texts from different genres (by writers such as Anna Mary Howitt, Jerome K. Jerome and George Gissing) are brought together as representing the different facets of the spectrum of idleness in the Victorian context."--Back cover Front Matter ....Pages i-xii Introduction (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 1-16 Front Matter ....Pages 17-17 A Brief Intellectual and Semantic History of “Idleness” (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 19-38 Sensibilities of Seeing (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 39-64 The Dangers of Idle Time (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 65-77 Genre and Gender (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 79-96 Front Matter ....Pages 97-97 The Victorian Idler’s Late-Romantic Mentality (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 99-107 Idleness and Idling in Anna Mary Howitt’s An Art-Student in Munich (1853) (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 109-143 W. H. Hudson, His Thinking Machine and Idle Days in Patagonia (1893) (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 145-171 Jerome K. Jerome’s Humoristic Idleness in Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) (1889): Lightness and Longing (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 173-199 Margaret Fountaine’s Diary Accounts of Her Restless Idling and Butterflying (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 201-228 George Gissing’s By the Ionian Sea (1901) as a Paradise of Idleness (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 229-261 Coda (Heidi Liedke)....Pages 263-271 Back Matter ....Pages 273-279 The Composition Context of Idle Days in PatagoniaEnforced Idleness Becomes Desired Idleness-Patagonia as Liminal Space; Re-subjectification Through Watchfulness; Textual "Speed Bumps," or Portable Idleness; References; Chapter 9 Jerome K. Jerome's Humoristic Idleness in Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!) (1889): Lightness and Longing; Popularising 'Thamesland' as a Space for Careless Idling; Work, Progress and (Sentimental) Idleness in Three Men in a Boat; Physicality and (Slow) Travel; Too Much of an Idler to Be Original? Jerome and Dickens Jr.'s Dictionary of the Thames Sightseeing vs. SeeingIn the Semantic Spotlight: The Development of the Verb 'To Gipsy'; Virtual Forms of Travel; Travelling "On the Inside"; River Journeys and Their Representations: Dickens and Banvard; References; Chapter 4 The Dangers of Idle Time; Why Guidebooks Are Like Goggles; The Problem of Idle Time; The Victorian Attitude Towards Travel: Leisure or Work?; References; Chapter 5 Genre and Gender; Travel Writing as a Late-Romantic Genre; The Connection Between Gender, Travel and Idleness; Idleness as a Gendered Concept; Precarious Idleness; References; Part II Case Studies Chapter 6 The Victorian Idler's Late-Romantic MentalityThree Dimensions of Re-subjectification: Readiness, Thereness and Dynamic Perception; Categories of Rendering the Experience of Idleness in Travelogues; References; Chapter 7 Idleness and Idling in Anna Mary Howitt's An Art-Student in Munich (1853); Written Pictures and Exaggerations; The Orchestration of Colour and the Receptive Art-Student Gaze; Experiencing Spaces of Idleness; Creating a Personal Cityscape; References; Chapter 8 W.H. Hudson, His Thinking Machine and Idle Days in Patagonia (1893)