1948: with post-war Britain's sense 'dulled by traffic and by bombs', this pocket-sized book was a clarion call for readers to rediscover the beauties of the idyllic English countryside. Published by Southern Railways, it recounts the joys of listening to birdsong, picking whortleberries, gazing at the clouds and 'being genial' in the bars of tiny village inns – experiences that had been obscured by war, deprivation and the bus and train journeys that suburbanisation had brought. Offering twenty real country walks around Surrey and Kent, this guide reveals where the 1940s rambler would be 'most likely to find quietude and loveliness' – as well as the best cakes!

This lively study provides an account of the 'fall and rise' of the English nation within the British discipline of English Literature between the late eighteenth century and the present day, offering a reconceptualisation of the relationship between English Literature and the formation of English cultural identity.

Mary Butts was an important figure in inter-war modernist circles and one who reviewed and associated with some of the major literary figures of the era, from T.S. Eliot to Gertrude Stein. Despite her importance and the varied nature of her writing, she has been a neglected figure in modernist scholarship. Providing a new analysis of the interwar literary period, Mary Butts and British Neo-Romanticism revisits her work - vividly experimental writings spanning memoir, poetry, polemic and fiction - through the lens of mid-20th-century British neo-Romanticism. The book argues that behind Butts's eco-feminist writings lies an intricate political and philosophical commentary.

This book explores components of national identity in Victorian Britain by analyzing travel literature. It draws on published and unpublished travel journals by middle-class men and women from England, Scotland, and Wales who toured the Continent and/or Britain. The main aim is to illustrate both the contexts that inspired the various collective identities of Britishness, Englishness, Scotsness, and Welshness, as well as the qualities Victorian men and women had in mind when they used such terms to identify and imagine themselves collectively.

Naples was conventionally the southernmost stop of the Grand Tour beyond which, it was assumed, lay violent disorder: earthquakes, malaria, bandits, inhospitable inns, few roads and appalling food. On the other hand, Southern Italy lay at the heart of Magna Graecia, whose legends were hard-wired into the cultural imaginations of the educated. This book studies the British travellers who visited Italy's Southern territories. Spanning the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, the author considers what these travellers discovered, not in the form of a survey, but as a series of unfolding impressions disclosing multiple Southern Italies. Of the numerous travellers analysed within this volume, the central figures are Henry Swinburne, Craufurd Tait Ramage and Norman Douglas, whose Old Calabria (1915) remains in print. Their appeal is that they take the region seriously: Southern Italy wasn't simply a testing ground for their superior sensibilities, it was a vibrant curiosity, unknown but within reach. Was the South simply behind on the road to European integration; or was it beyond a fault line, representing a viable alternative to Northern neuroses? The travelogues analysed in this book address a wide variety of themes which continue to shape discussions about European identity today.