The Polite Tourist

"When Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, set off with her aunt and uncle for a tour of Derbyshire, England, she planned to see both the beauties of the countryside and its fine mansions. And when she overcame her prejudices toward the proud Mr. Darcy and became his wife, she found herself the mistress of his country estate, Pemberley. Not every visit to an English country house has such a dramatic outcome, but most result in great enjoyment. In Elizabethan England tourists strolled around palaces, royal and private, like Hampton Court in Surrey and Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire. In Victorian Britain, sightseers took advantage of the brand-new railway to descend in droves on prehistoric monuments like Stonehenge and great houses like Knole and Chatsworth. Today, millions of tourists visit these sites and other great country houses and their gardens, many of them maintained by the National Trust. Here, Adrian Tinniswood leads a grand, sumptuously illustrated tour, describing not only the great houses and estates that have attracted visitors but also tracing the ways in which concepts of history and taste have changed over the centuries"--Dust jacket.