Focusing on the formative influence of the works of John Ruskin in defining and developing cultural tourism, this book describes and assesses their effects on the ‘tourist gaze’ (‘where to go and what to see’, and how to see it) as directed at landscape, scenery, architecture and townscape, from the early Victorian period onwards.

This book is an interdisciplinary collaboration between a literary critic and cultural historian, which examines and recovers a radical and still urgent challenge to the industrialisation of cultural tourism from the work of John Ruskin. Ruskin exerted a formative influence on the definition and development of cultural tourism which was probably as significant as that, for example, of his contemporary Thomas Cook. The book assesses Ruskin’s overall influence on the development of national and international tourism in the context of pre-existing expectations about tourism flows and cultural capital and alongside parallel and intersecting trends of the time; examines Ruskin’s contribution to the tourist agenda at all social levels; and discusses Ruskin’s significance for current debates in tourism studies, especially questions of the place of the ‘canon’ of traditional European cultural tourism in a post-modern tourist setting, and the various incarnations of ‘heritage tourism’.

Chapter One: Introduction: The Joy of Travel

Chapter Two: The Ruskin Moment

Chapter Three: Sightseeing with Ruskin

Chapter Four: The Interpretation of Places

Chapter Five: Ruskin and Tourist Destinations

Chapter Six: Ruskin and Popular Tourism

Chapter Seven: Ruskin and the English Lakes: Brantwood as a Tourist Site

Chapter Eight: Concluding Reflections: Ruskin Against the Market