History of a Six Weeks' Tour - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

History of a Six Weeks' Tour through a part of France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland; with Letters Descriptive of a Sail Round the Lake of Geneva and of the Glaciers of Chamouni is a travel narrative

Travel literature

Travel literature is travel writing of literary value. Travel literature typically records the experiences of an author touring a place for the pleasure of travel. An individual work is sometimes called a travelogue or itinerary. Travel literature may be cross-cultural or transnational in focus, or...

by the British Romantic

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

authors Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...

and Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Percy Bysshe Shelley was one of the major English Romantic poets and is critically regarded as among the finest lyric poets in the English language. Shelley was famous for his association with John Keats and Lord Byron...

. Published in 1817, it describes two trips taken by Mary, Percy, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont

Claire Clairmont

Clara Mary Jane Clairmont , or Claire Clairmont as she was commonly known, was a stepsister of writer Mary Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra.-Early life:...

: one across Europe in 1814, and one to Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva or Lake Léman is a lake in Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe. 59.53 % of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland , and 40.47 % under France...

in 1816. Divided into three sections, the text consists of a journal, four letters, and Percy Shelley’s poem "Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc (poem)

"Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni" is an ode by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The poem was composed between 22 July 1816 and 29 August 1816 during Percy Shelley's journey to the Chamonix Valley, and intended to reflect the scenery through which he travelled...

". Apart from the poem, the text was primarily written and organised by Mary Shelley. In 1840 she revised the journal and the letters, republishing them in a collection of Percy Shelley's writings.

Part of the new genre

Genre

Genre , Greek: genos, γένος) is the term for any category of literature or other forms of art or culture, e.g. music, and in general, any type of discourse, whether written or spoken, audial or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria. Genres are formed by conventions that change over time...

of the Romantic travel narrative, History of a Six Weeks' Tour exudes spontaneity and enthusiasm; the authors demonstrate their desire to develop a sense of taste and distinguish themselves from those around them. The romantic elements

Romance (genre)

As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...

of the work would have hinted at the text's radical

Radicalism (historical)

The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...

politics to nineteenth-century readers. However, the text's frank discussion of politics, including positive references to the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

and praise of Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

, was unusual for a travel narrative at the time, particularly one authored primarily by a woman.

Although it sold poorly, History of a Six Weeks' Tour received favourable reviews. In proposing another travel narrative to her publisher in 1843, Mary Shelley claimed "my 6 weeks tour brought me many compliments".

Biographical background

Mary Godwin and Percy Shelley met and fell in love in 1814. Percy Shelley initially visited the Godwin household because he was interested in meeting his philosophical hero, Mary's father, William Godwin

William Godwin

William Godwin was an English journalist, political philosopher and novelist. He is considered one of the first exponents of utilitarianism, and the first modern proponent of anarchism...

. However, Mary and Percy soon began having secret rendezvous, despite the fact that Percy was already married. To Mary's dismay, her father disapproved of their extramarital affair and tried to thwart the relationship. On 28 July 1814, Mary and Percy secretly left for France, taking Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont

Claire Clairmont

Clara Mary Jane Clairmont , or Claire Clairmont as she was commonly known, was a stepsister of writer Mary Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron's daughter Allegra.-Early life:...

, with them.

The trio travelled for six weeks, from 28 July to 13 September 1814, through France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, and Holland; however, they were forced to return to England due to financial considerations. The situation upon their return was fraught with complications: Mary had become pregnant with a child who would soon die, she and Percy now found themselves penniless, and, to Mary's genuine surprise, her father refused to have anything to do with her.

In May 1816, Mary Godwin, Percy Shelley, and their second child travelled to Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

with Claire Clairmont. They spent the summer months with the Romantic poet

Romantic poetry

Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...

Lord Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS , commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was a British poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement...

, but, as Mary Shelley later wrote of the year without a summer, "[i]t proved a wet, ungenial summer and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house". The group spent their time writing, boating on Lake Geneva

Lake Geneva

, and talking late into the night. Sitting around a log fire at Byron's villa, the company also amused themselves by reading German ghost stories, prompting Byron to suggest they each write their own supernatural tale. Mary Godwin began writing what she assumed would be a short story, but with Percy Shelley's encouragement and collaboration, she expanded this tale into her first novel, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus

Frankenstein

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...

.

Mary, Percy, and Claire returned to England in September and on 30 December 1816 Percy and Mary married (two weeks after the death of Percy's first wife), healing the family rift. In March 1817, the Shelleys and Claire moved to Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Marlow, Buckinghamshire

Marlow is a town and civil parish within Wycombe district in south Buckinghamshire, England...

. At Marlow, they entertained friends, worked hard at their writing, and often discussed politics. Early in the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley finished Frankenstein, which was published anonymously in January 1818. She also began work on History of a Six Weeks' Tour, which was published in November 1817.

Composition and publication

In the summer of 1817, Mary Shelley started to assemble the couple’s joint diary from their 1814 journey into a travel book. At what point she decided to include the letters from the 1816 Geneva trip and Percy Shelley's poem "Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc (poem)

" is unclear, but by 28 September the journal and the letters were a single text. By the middle of October she was making fair copies for the press and correcting and transcribing Frankenstein for publication while Percy was working on The Revolt of Islam
The Revolt of Islam
The Revolt of Islam is a poem in twelve cantos composed by Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1817. The poem was originally published under the title Laon and Cythna; or, The Revolution of the Golden City: A Vision of the Nineteenth Century by Charles and James Ollier in December, 1817...

. Percy probably corrected and copyedited the journal section while Mary did the same for his letters. Advertisements for the work appeared on 30 October in the Morning Chronicle
Morning Chronicle
The Morning Chronicle was a newspaper founded in 1769 in London, England, and published under various owners until 1862. It was most notable for having been the first employer of Charles Dickens, and for publishing the articles by Henry Mayhew which were collected and published in book format in...

and on 1 November in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

, promising a 6 November release. However, the work was not actually published until 12 and 13 November. It was Mary Shelley’s first published work. (Frankenstein not published until January 1818.)

History of a Six Weeks' Tour begins with a "Preface", written by Percy Shelley, followed by the journal section. The journal consists of edited entries from the joint diary that Percy and Mary Shelley kept during their 1814 trip to the Continent, specifically those from 28 July to 13 September 1814. Of the 8,500 words in the journal section, 1,150 are from Percy’s entries and either copied verbatim or only slightly paraphrased. Almost all of the passages describing the sublime

Sublime (philosophy)

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...

are in Percy’s words—passages describing God in nature, experiences of terror and awe, the transportation of the soul, and particularly the feeling of being overwhelmed by the majesty of nature, are Percy's. When Mary turned to her own entries, however, she significantly revised them; according to Jeanne Moskal, the editor of the recent definitive edition of the Tour, "almost nothing of her original phrasing remains". She even included sections of Claire Clairmont’s journal.

The second section of the text consists of four "Letters written during a Residence of Three Months in the Environs of Geneva, in the Summer of the Year 1816". The first two letters are signed "M" and the second two "S". The first two are attributed to Mary Shelley, but their origin is obscure. As Moskal writes, "the obvious inference is that they are literary versions of lost private epistles to Fanny Godwin

Fanny Imlay

Frances "Fanny" Imlay , also known as Fanny Godwin, was the illegitimate daughter of the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft and the American commercial speculator Gilbert Imlay.Although Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth...

", Mary Shelley's stepsister who remained in England and with whom she corresponded during the journey. However, Moskal also notes that there is a missing Mary Shelley notebook from precisely this time, from which the material in these letters could have come: "It is extremely likely that this notebook contained the same kind of mix of entries made by both Shelleys that the surviving first (July 1814—May 1815) and second (July 1816—June 1819) journal notebooks exhibit....Furthermore, Letter I contains four short passages found almost verbatim in P. B. Shelley’s letter of 15 May to T. L. Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock

Thomas Love Peacock was an English satirist and author.Peacock was a close friend of Percy Bysshe Shelley and they influenced each other's work...

." The third and fourth letters are composites of Mary’s journal entry for 21 July and one of Percy's letters to Peacock.

The third section of the text consists only of Percy’s poem "Mont Blanc. Lines written in the vale of Chamouni"; it was the first and only publication of the poem in his lifetime. It has been argued by leading Percy Shelley scholar Donald Reiman that the History of a Six Weeks' Tour is arranged so as to lead up to "Mont Blanc". However, those who see the work as primarily a picturesque

Picturesque

Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year 1770, a practical book which instructed England's...

travel narrative argue that the descriptions of Alpine scenes would have been familiar to early nineteenth-century audiences and they would not have expected a poetic climax.

In 1839, History of a Six Weeks' Tour was revised and republished as “Journal of a Six Weeks’ Tour” and “Letters from Geneva” in Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments, by Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edited by Mrs. Shelley (1840). Although these works were not by her husband, she decided to include them because they were "part of his life", as she explained to her friend Leigh Hunt. She appended her initials to the works to indicate her authorship. As Moskal explains, "the unity of the 1817 volume as a volume was dissolved" to make way for a biography of Percy Shelley. After Percy Shelley drowned in 1822, his father forbade Mary Shelley from writing a memoir or biography of the poet. She therefore added significant biographical notices to the edited collections of his works. The 1840 version of History of a Six Weeks' Tour has four major types of changes according to Moskal: "(i) modernization and correction of spelling, punctuation and French (ii) self-distancing from the familial relationship with Claire Clairmont (iii) a heightened sensitivity to national identity (iv) presentation of the travelers as a writing, as well as reading, circle". As a result of these changes, more of Percy Shelley’s writing was included in the 1840 version than in the 1817 version. In 1845, Mary Shelley published a one-volume edition with additional minor changes, based on the 1840 version.

Description

History of a Six Weeks' Tour consists of three major sections: a journal, letters from Geneva, and the poem "Mont Blanc". It begins with a short preface, which claims "nothing can be more unpresuming than this little volume" and makes it clear that the couple in the narrative is married (although Mary and Percy were not at the time).

The journal, which switches between the first-person singular and plural

First-person narrative

First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...

but never identifies its narrators, describes Percy, Mary, and Claire’s 1814 six-week tour across the Continent. It is divided by country: France, Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. After the group arrives in Calais

Calais

Calais is a town in Northern France in the department of Pas-de-Calais, of which it is a sub-prefecture. Although Calais is by far the largest city in Pas-de-Calais, the department's capital is its third-largest city of Arras....

and proceeds to Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, they decide on a plan: "After talking over and rejecting many plans, we fixed on one eccentric enough, but which, from its romance, was very pleasing to us. In England we could not have put it in execution without sustaining continual insult and impertinence: the French are far more tolerant of the vagaries of their neighbours. We resolved to walk through France". Each day they enter a new town; but even while travelling, they spend time writing and reading. The journal comments on the people they meet, the countryside, and the current events that have shaped the environment. Some of what they see is beautiful and some is "barren and wretched". Percy sprains his ankle, which becomes an increasing problem—the group is forced to hire a carriage. By the time the trio reaches Lucerne

Lucerne

Lucerne is a city in north-central Switzerland, in the German-speaking portion of that country. Lucerne is the capital of the Canton of Lucerne and the capital of the district of the same name. With a population of about 76,200 people, Lucerne is the most populous city in Central Switzerland, and...

, they are nearly out of money and decide to return home. They return by boat along the Rhine, the cheapest mode of travel. Despite problems with unreliable boats and dangerous waters, they see some beautiful scenery before landing in England.

The four "Letters from Geneva" cover the period between May and July 1816 which the Shelleys spent at Lake Geneva and switch between the singular and plural first-person. Letters I, II, and IV describe the sublime

Sublime (philosophy)

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...

aspects of Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc

Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco , meaning "White Mountain", is the highest mountain in the Alps, Western Europe and the European Union. It rises above sea level and is ranked 11th in the world in topographic prominence...

, the Alps

Alps

The Alps is one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany to France in the west....

, Lake Geneva, and the glaciers around Chamonix

Chamonix

Chamonix-Mont-Blanc or, more commonly, Chamonix is a commune in the Haute-Savoie département in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. It was the site of the 1924 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Olympics...

:

Letter III describes a tour around the environs of Vevey

Vevey

Vevey is a town in Switzerland in the canton Vaud, on the north shore of Lake Geneva, near Lausanne.It was the seat of the district of the same name until 2006, and is now part of the Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut District...

and other places associated with the Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

: "This journey has been on every account delightful, but most especially, because then I first knew the divine beauty of Rousseau’s imagination, as it exhibits itself in Julie."

"Mont Blanc" compares the sublime aspect of the mountain to the human imagination:

The everlasting universe of things

Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves,

Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom...

Thus thou, ravine of Arve—dark, deep ravine—

Thou many-coloured, many-voiced vale...

While emphasising the ability of the human imagination to uncover truth through a study of nature, the poem also questions religious certainty. However, according to the poem only a privileged few are able to see nature as it truly is and reveal its secrets to the world.

Genre

History of a Six Weeks’ Tour is a travel narrative

Travel literature

, part of a literary tradition begun in the seventeenth century. Through the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, Continental travel was considered educational: young, aristocratic gentlemen completed their studies by learning European languages abroad and visiting foreign courts. In the early seventeenth century, however, the emphasis shifted from classical learning

Classics

Classics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...

to empirical experience, such as knowledge of topography

Topography

Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those ofplanets, moons, and asteroids...

, history, and culture. Detailed travel books, including personal travel narratives, began to be published and became popular in the eighteenth century: over 1,000 individual travel narratives and travel miscellanies were published between 1660 and 1800. The empiricism

Empiricism

Empiricism is a theory of knowledge that asserts that knowledge comes only or primarily via sensory experience. One of several views of epistemology, the study of human knowledge, along with rationalism, idealism and historicism, empiricism emphasizes the role of experience and evidence,...

that was driving the scientific revolution

Scientific revolution

The Scientific Revolution is an era associated primarily with the 16th and 17th centuries during which new ideas and knowledge in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine and chemistry transformed medieval and ancient views of nature and laid the foundations for modern science...

spread to travel literature; for example, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu

The Lady Mary Wortley Montagu was an English aristocrat and writer. Montagu is today chiefly remembered for her letters, particularly her letters from Turkey, as wife to the British ambassador, which have been described by Billie Melman as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about...

included information she learned in Turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

regarding smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

inoculation in her travel letters. By 1742, critic and essayist Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

was recommending that travelers engage in "a moral and ethical study of men and manners" in addition to a scientific study of topography and geography.

Over the course of the eighteenth century, the Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

became increasingly popular; travel to the Continent for Britain’s elite was not only educational but also nationalistic. All aristocratic gentlemen took similar trips and visited similar sites, often devoted to developing an appreciation of Britain from abroad. The Grand Tour was celebrated as educational travel when it involved exchanging scientific information with the intellectual elite, learning about other cultures, and preparing oneself to lead. However, it was condemned as trivial when the tourist simply purchased curio

Curio (furniture)

A curio is a predominantly glass cabinet with a metal or wood framework used to display collections of figurines that share some common theme. Most curios have glass on each side or a mirror at the back and glass levels to show the entire figurine. A curio prevents dust and vermin from destroying...

collectibles, acquired a "superficial social polish", and pursued fleeting sexual relationships. During the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

, the Continent was closed to British travellers and the Grand Tour came under increasing criticism, particularly from radicals

Radicalism (historical)

such as William Godwin who scorned its aristocratic connections. Young Romantic writers criticised its lack of spontaneity; they celebrated Madame de Staёl's

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein , commonly known as Madame de Staël, was a French-speaking Swiss author living in Paris and abroad. She influenced literary tastes in Europe at the turn of the 19th century.- Childhood :...

novel Corinne (1807), which depicts proper travel as "immediate, sensitive, and above all [an] enthusiastic experience".

A new form of travel emerged—Romantic travel—which focused on developing "taste", rather than acquiring objects, and having "enthusiastic experiences". History of a Six Weeks' Tour embodies this new style of travel. It is a specifically Romantic travel narrative because of its enthusiasm and the writers' desire to develop a sense of "taste". The travellers are open to new experiences, changing their itinerary frequently and using whatever vehicles they can find. For example, at one point in the journal, Mary Shelley muses:

Not everything she encounters is beautiful, however, and she juxtaposes her distaste for the German working class with her delight with French servants. Although politically liberal

Liberalism

Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...

, Mary Shelley is aesthetically repelled by the Germans and therefore excludes them. Unlike the non-discriminating Claire Clairmont, Shelley feels free to make judgments of the scenes around her; Shelley writes that Claire "on looking at this scene...exclaimed, 'Oh! this is beautiful enough; let us live here.' This was her exclamation on every new scene, and as each surpassed the one before, she cried, 'I am glad we did not stay at Charenton, but let us live here'". Shelley also compares herself positively to the French peasants who are unaware that Napoleon has been deposed. As scholar Angela Jones contends, "Shelley may be said to figure herself as a more knowledgeable, disinterested English outsider capable of rendering impartial judgment"—an Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

value.

However, as Romanticist Jacqueline Labbe argues, Mary Shelley challenges the conventions of the Romantic travel narrative as well. For example, one reviewer wrote, "now and then a French phrase drops sweetly enough from [the author’s] fair mouth", and as Labbe explains, these phrases are supposed to lead the reader to imagine a "beautiful heroine and her group passing easily from village to village". However, both French quotations in History of a Six Weeks' Tour undercut this Romantic image. The first describes the overturning of a boat and the drowning of its occupants; the second is a warning not to travel on foot through France, as Napoleon’s army has just been disbanded and the women are in danger of rape.

While the overarching generic category for History of a Six Weeks' Tour is that of the travel narrative, its individual sections can be considered separately. The first journey is told as a "continuous, undated diary entry" while the second journey is told through epistolary and lyric

Lyric poetry

Lyric poetry is a genre of poetry that expresses personal and emotional feelings. In the ancient world, lyric poems were those which were sung to the lyre. Lyric poems do not have to rhyme, and today do not need to be set to music or a beat...

forms. Moskal agrees with Reiman that the book was constructed to culminate in "Mont Blanc" and she notes that this was accomplished using a traditional hierarchy of genres—diary, letters, poem—a hierarchy that is gendered as Mary Shelley’s writings are superseded by Percy’s. However, these traditional gender-genre associations are undercut by the implicit acknowledgment of Mary Shelley as the primary author, with her journal giving the entire work its name and contributing the bulk of the text.

The journal is also threaded through with elements of the medieval and Gothic romance tradition

Romance (genre)

: "accounts of ruined castles, enchanting valleys, and sublime views". In fact, in "The English in Italy", Mary Shelley writes of the journey that "it was acting in a novel, being an incarnate romance". However, these romantic descriptions are often ambiguous. Often single sentences contain juxtapositions between "romance" and "reality": "Many villages, ruined by war, occupied the most romantic spots". She also references Don Quixote, but he was "famous for his delusions of romance", as Labbe points out. Mary Shelley’s allusions to Cervantes's

Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...

Don Quixote (1605) not only places her text in a romance tradition, they would also have hinted at its radicalism

Radicalism (historical)

to contemporary readers. During the 1790s, Mary Shelley’s father, William Godwin, connected his support for the French Revolution with the romance tradition, specifically Don Quixote and any allusion to the novel would have signalled Godwinian radicalism to readers at the time. It would also have suggested support for reform efforts in Spain, which was rebelling against Napoleon. The beginning of the journal is dominated by romance conventions, but this style disappears when the travellers run out of money. However, romance conventions briefly return during the trip down the Rhine. As Labbe argues, "it would appear that while [Shelley] seems to be industriously salting her narrative with romance in order, perhaps, to garner public approval, she also ... exposes the falsity of such a scheme."

One of the most important influences on History of a Six Weeks' Tour was Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark is a personal travel narrative by the eighteenth-century British feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The twenty-five letters cover a wide range of topics, from sociological reflections on Scandinavia and its peoples to...

(1796), written by Mary Shelley’s mother Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...

. A travel narrative which reflects on topography, politics, society, aesthetics, and the author’s personal feelings, it provided a model for Mary Shelley's work. Like her mother, Mary Shelley revealed her liberalism by boldly discussing politics; however, this political tone was unusual for travel works at the time and was considered inappropriate for women writers. Like Wollstonecraft’s Letters, History of a Six Weeks' Tour blurs the line between private and public spheres by using intimate genres such as the journal and the letter, allowing Mary Shelley to present political opinions through personal anecdote and the picturesque

Picturesque

Themes

History of a Six Weeks' Tour is part of a liberal

Liberalism

reaction to recent history: its trajectory begins with a survey of the devastation of the Napoleonic Wars and ends by celebrating the sublime

Sublime (philosophy)

In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual or artistic...

in nature. William Wordsworth’s

William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads....

1850 The Prelude
The Prelude
The Prelude; or, Growth of a Poet's Mind is an autobiographical, "philosophical" poem in blank verse by the English poet William Wordsworth. Wordsworth wrote the first version of the poem when he was 28, and worked over the rest of it for his long life without publishing it...

and the third canto of Byron’s Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage is a lengthy narrative poem in four parts written by Lord Byron. It was published between 1812 and 1818 and is dedicated to "Ianthe". The poem describes the travels and reflections of a world-weary young man who, disillusioned with a life of pleasure and revelry, looks...

follow a similar course. As Moskal explains, "nature is troped as the repository of a sublimity, once incarnated in Napoleon, that will re-emerge in politics". The book is therefore not only a liberal political statement but also a Romantic celebration of nature.

The journal begins with, as Moskal describes, a "view of Napoleon’s shattered political power". He had just been exiled to Elba

Elba

Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...

a few months before the Shelleys arrived in Europe. Surveying the devastation caused by the Napoleonic Wars, Mary Shelley worries about how the British will handle Paris and grieves over the "ruin" brought to the small French town of Nogent

Nogent

Nogent is the name or part of the name of several communes in France:* Nogent, in the Haute-Marne département* Nogent-l'Abbesse, in the Marne département* Nogent-l'Artaud, in the Aisne département* Nogent-sur-Aube, in the Aube département...

by the Cossacks. Between the two journeys recorded in the text, Napoleon returned to power in the so-called Hundred Days

Hundred Days

The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...

and was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo

Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands...

in 1815. The four letters from Geneva reflect obliquely on this event. As Moskal argues, "the Shelleys focus on the forms of sublimity and power that outlast Napoleon: the literary genius of Rousseau and the natural sublimity of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc". Both Shelleys use their works in History of a Six Weeks’ Tour to assess and evaluate the French Revolution

French Revolution

, making it a highly political travel narrative. In Letter II, Mary Shelley writes:

Mary Shelley also includes positive portrayals of the French people. As Mary Shelley scholar Betty T. Bennett

Betty T. Bennett

Betty T. Bennett was Distinguished Professor of Literature and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at American University. She was previously Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences and acting provost of Pratt Institute from 1979 to 1985...

explains, "politically pointed, these accolades underscore the link between the 1814 defeated enemy of Britain and the pre-Napoleon democratic spirit of the 1789 Revolution, a spirit the Shelleys wished to reactivate".

Lives of people interested Mary Shelley and she recorded them, but she also recorded a great deal of the travellers’ own feelings, suggesting to the reader the appropriate reaction. For example, she wrote of the French town Nogent:

Reception

History of a Six Weeks' Tour received three major reviews, mostly favourable. However, the book did not sell well. Percy Shelley discovered in April or May 1820 that there were no profits to pay the printer and when Charles Ollier, the co-publisher, went out of business in 1823, his inventory included 92 copies of the work. Still, Mary Shelley believed the work was successful, and when she proposed another travel narrative, Rambles in Germany and Italy
Rambles in Germany and Italy
Rambles in Germany and Italy, in 1840, 1842, and 1843 is a travel narrative by the British Romantic author Mary Shelley. Issued in 1844, it is her last published work. Published in two volumes, the text describes two European trips that Mary Shelley took with her son, Percy Florence Shelley, and...

, to publisher Edward Moxon

Edward Moxon

Edward Moxon was a British poet and publisher, significant in Victorian literature.Moxon was born at Wakefield in Yorkshire, where his father Michael worked in the wool trade. In 1817 he left for London, joining Longman in 1821...

in 1843, she wrote "my 6 weeks tour brought me many compliments". Her comments may have been self-interested, however.

The first review of History of a Six Weeks' Tour was published by The Eclectic Review
The Eclectic Review
The Eclectic Review was a British periodical published monthly during the first half of the 19th century aimed at highly literate readers of all classes. Published between 1805 and 1868, it reviewed books in many fields, including literature, history, theology, politics, science, art, and philosophy...

in May 1818, which reviewed the book along with publisher Thomas Hookham's account of a Swiss tour, A Walk through Switzerland in September 1816. Although both works share the same fascination with Rousseau and his liberal ideas, only Hookham is attacked; as scholar Benjamin Colbert explains, "Shelley tends to remain on more neutral territory", such as the cult of sensibility

Sensibility

Sensibility refers to an acute perception of or responsiveness toward something, such as the emotions of another. This concept emerged in eighteenth-century Britain, and was closely associated with studies of sense perception as the means through which knowledge is gathered...

and the novel Julie. However, the reviewer questions the authenticity of the work: "To us...the value of the book is considerably lessened by a strong suspicion that the dramatis personae are fictitious, and that the little adventures introduced for the purpose of giving life and interest to the narration, are the mere invention of the Author." He identifies passages that remind him of similar travel narratives by Patrick Brydone

Patrick Brydone

Patrick Brydone FRSE FRS FSA FSA was a Scottish traveller and author who served as Comptroller of the Stamp Office.Brydone was born in Coldingham, Berwickshire, where his father Robert Brydon was a Church of Scotland minister....

, Ann Radcliffe

Ann Radcliffe

Anne Radcliffe was an English author, and considered the pioneer of the gothic novel . Her style is romantic in its vivid descriptions of landscapes, and long travel scenes, yet the Gothic element is obvious through her use of the supernatural...

, and John Carr, effectively identifying the generic tradition in which the Shelleys were writing.

The second and most positive review was published by Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine
Blackwood's Magazine was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by the publisher William Blackwood and was originally called the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine. The first number appeared in April 1817 under the editorship of Thomas Pringle and James Cleghorn...

in July 1818. The reviewer was most impressed with the journal section, particularly its informality and concision: "the perusal of it rather produces the same effect as a smart walk before breakfast, in company with a lively friend who hates long stories". Covertly comparing the work to bluestocking

Blue Stockings Society (England)

The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century. The society emphasized education and mutual co-operation rather than the individualism which marked the French version....

Lady Morgan’s

Lady Morgan

Sydney, Lady Morgan , was an Irish novelist, best known as the author of The Wild Irish Girl.-Early life:...

recent France (1817), the reviewer found the female writer of History of a Six Weeks' Tour much more favourable: "The writer of this little volume, too, is a Lady, and writes like one, with ease, gracefulness, and vivacity. Above all, there is something truly delightful in the colour of her stockings; they are of the purest white, and much more becoming than the brightest blue." The Monthly Review
Monthly Review (London)
The Monthly Review was an English periodical founded by Ralph Griffiths, a Nonconformist bookseller. The first periodical in England to offer reviews, it featured the novelist and poet Oliver Goldsmith as an early contributor. William Kenrick, the "superlative scoundrel", was editor from 1759 to...

published a short review in January 1819; they found the first journey “hurried” but the second one better described.

For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Mary Shelley was known as the author of Frankenstein and the wife of famous Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. It was not until the 1970s, with the rise of feminist literary criticism

Feminist literary criticism

Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...

, that scholars began to pay attention to her other works. In fact, with the exception of Frankenstein and The Last Man
The Last Man
The Last Man is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by Mary Shelley, which was first published in 1826. The book tells of a future world that has been ravaged by a plague. The novel was harshly reviewed at the time, and was virtually unknown until a scholarly revival beginning in the 1960s...

, until the 1990s almost all of Mary Shelley's writings had gone out of print or only been available in expensive, scholarly editions. It was not until the publication of scholarship by Mary Poovey

Mary Poovey

Mary Poovey is an American cultural historian and literary critic whose work focuses on the Victorian Era. She is currently Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University,and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge. Her PhD was from the...

and Anne K. Mellor

Anne K. Mellor

Anne Kostelanetz Mellor is a Distinguished Professor of English Literature and Women's Studies at UCLA; she specializes in Romantic literature, British cultural history, feminist theory, philosophy, art history and gender studies...

in the 1980s that Mary Shelley's "other" works—her short stories, essays, reviews, dramas, biographies, travel narratives, and other novels—began to be recognised as literary achievements.

External links

History of a Six Weeks' Tour (1817) at Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

and Google Books
Essays, Letters from Abroad, Translations and Fragments (1840) from Google Books
Audiorecording of "Mont Blanc" read by Julian Jamison by LibriVox: http://librivox.org/long-poems-collection-004/
Online version of the 1817 edition published by T. Hookham, Jun. and C. and J. Ollier in London: http://www.archive.org/stream/sixweekhistoryof00shelrich#page/n1/mode/2up

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