Working People’s Travel in the Periodical Press, 1850 to 1870

This chapter looks at the cultural work of periodicals in promoting working people’s travel during the 1850s to 1870s. It considers a sample of periodicals targeting or including working-class readers for their presentation of leisure trips but also compares this to the same periodicals’ treatment of emigration. Periodicals suited the reading opportunities of working-class life, and, potentially, the single article was an ideal form for reporting modest forms of travel. The chapter shows, however, that this medial affordance was never used to the full. Since, in most cases, the periodicals reflected the middle-class views of their proprietors and editors, they typically expressed reservations about working people’s travel. Working people were rarely given an opportunity to report their own leisure travelling, and there was a strong patronising element when their travels were reported by middle-class observers. Working people were also rarely given advice for travelling individually. As armchair travellers, however, they were familiarised with the wider discourse on travel of the period.