Grand Tour Database from Adam Matthew

In preparation for Emory's Primary Evidence QEP, the library has just purchased 18 additional primary source databases from the vendor, Adam Matthew, that can be incorporated into course assignments or aid scholars researching a broad array of subjects. 

The Grand Tour database contains accounts of the English abroad, c1550-1850, and serves to highlight the influence of continental travel on 18^th century British art, architecture, urban planning, literature and philosophy.  Students can find primary source  (letters; diaries; account books; guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings, drawings; and maps) material to illuminate everyday issues and illustrate larger themes of the age of enlightenment and politics of the day.

• Explore interactive maps  of 18^th century Europe
• Study photographs of key Grand Tour locations in Florence, Venice, Rome, and Naples
• Research paintings and sketches inspired from by the Grand Tour, many from the Yale Center for British Art 

Click on the “popular searches” directly below the search box and find topics from Ancient Monuments to Women Writers, as well as pre-set searches on countries, regions, cities/towns, and people.

The database also digitizes the secondary source reference book, A DICTIONARY OF BRITISH AND IRISH TRAVELLERS IN ITALY 1701-1800, with easy to search  biographical entries on grand tourists,  students of the fine arts diplomats, merchants, Jacobite exiles, and British and Irish families already living abroad.  These entries also link directly to images of archive notes, when available, from the Brinsley Ford archive.

There are helpful essays, chronologies, and bibliographies BUT the meat of this database collection is the primary documents and images from impressive archives and museums.  Martha Fogg, Project Editor for The Grand Tour, picks the following three examples to show the range and variety of sources 

• Susan Horner Collection: Journal, 1861-62 (British Institute, Florence)
• Joseph Wright of Derby, Vesuvius from Posillipo, c1788 (Yale Center for British Art)
• Tobias Smollett, Travels through France and Italy, 1766

Take a tour of this database now and remember it when starting an project dealingh with 18th century Europe.