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"Thomas Pennant of Downing, Flintshire (1726-1798), naturalist, antiquarian and self-styled 'Curious Traveller,' published accounts of his pioneering travels in Scotland and Wales to wide acclaim between 1769 and 1784. He directly inspired Johnson, Boswell and hundreds of subsequent travellers. In Wales, he is known as the 'Father of Cambrian Tourism.' A keen observer and cataloguer of everything from plants, birds and minerals to ancient monuments and modern fisheries, he corresponded with a vast network of leading natural scientists and antiquarians. The 'Tours,' widely read and much imitated, indisputably helped bring about a richer, more complex understanding of the multiple histories and cultures of Britain at a time when 'Britishness' was itself a fragile and developing concept. This collection seeks to address the comparative neglect of Pennant's travel writing by bringing together researchers from literary criticism, art history, Celtic studies, archaeology and natural history. Attentive to the visual as well as textual aspects of his topographical enquiries, it rehabilitates a neglected aspect of the Enlightenment in relation to questions of British identity, offering a new assessment of an important chapter in the development of domestic travel writing"-- Introduction: Thomas Pennant, Curious Traveller / Mary-Ann Constantine and Nigel Leask -- "A round jump from ornithology to antiquity" : The Development of Thomas Pennant's Tours / R. Paul Evans -- 2. Thomas Pennant : Some Working Practices of an Archaeological Travel-Writer in Late Eighteenth-Century Britain / C. Stephen Briggs -- 3. Heart of Darkness : Thomas Pennant and Roman Britain / Mary-Ann Constantine -- 4. Constructing Identities in the Eighteenth Century : Thomas Pennant and the Early Medieval Sculpture of Scotland and England / Jane Hawkes -- 5. Shaping a Heroic Life : Thomas Pennant on Owen Glyndwr / Dafydd Johnston -- 6. "The First Antiquary of his Country" : Robert Riddell's Extra-Illustrated and Annotated Volumes of Thomas Pennant's Tours in Scotland / Ailsa Hutton and Nigel Leask -- 7. "A galaxy of the blended lights" : The Reception of Thomas Pennant / Elizabeth Edwards -- 8. "As if created by fusion of matter after some intense heat" : Pioneering Geological Observations in Thomas Pennant's Tours of Scotland / Tom Furniss -- 9. Geological Landscape as Antiquarian Ruin : Banks, Pennant and the Isle of Staffa / Allison Ksiazkiewicz -- 10. Pennant, Hunter, Stubbs and the Pursuit of Nature / Helen McCormack -- 11. Pennant's Legacy : The Popularization of Natural History through Botanical Touring and Observation in Nineteenth-Century Wales / Caroline R. Kerkham -- Short Bibliography of Thomas Pennant's Tours in Scotland and Wales
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