The chief interest of the antiquarian in Rome’s ruins was topographical, identifying them if possible with structures known and described in Latin literature. Attempts to picture the layout of the ancient city generated numerous maps and disquisitions, which gradually morphed into guidebooks for tourists, many of which focussed on only the ancient remains to the exclusion of the modern city. The development of tourism is one of the capital outcomes of the fascination with the ruins of Rome. There does not seem to have been any other city or site in the world that was visited for the sake of its ruins. Topographical studies were, however, hampered by their reliance on more (or in one case, less) ancient texts in which buildings and their locations were mentioned, not always reliably. It became clear in due course that the only way forward lay in archaeological excavation.

Chapter 3 considers the various forms of writing about the city that imagined or invoked the perspective of the stranger who walked its streets. It examines how tourist accounts of London in pocket guidebooks shared with proposals for urban improvements and surveys of the city an understanding of the visitor to London as both an audience for accounts of London and also a potential critic of the city. While map, print, and booksellers began to produce items that walked strangers around the city and pointed out its key sites, those proposing improvements expressed concerns that foreign travellers might be disappointed by a city that lacked the grand and magnificent architecture of its European neighbours. Together, these works point to a desire to accommodate strangers and to offer them an account of Britain as a polite and commercial nation.

While most critics focus their attentions elsewhere, A Passage to India is at least partly a book about tourism and about the sort of interactions that regularly take place between myriad groups as a consequence of this pastime. There is quite a lot of evidence for reading the novel in this way. The first two of the three sections in the book begin with short chapters written loosely in the form of a guidebook introducing geography, geology, history, and cultural differences. Mrs. Moore and Adela Quested are ultimately tourists anxious “about seeing the real India.”1 Their arrival in Chandrapore spawns relationships and drama around which the plot revolves, including a pivotal crisis experienced during an ill-fated excursion to see the Marabar Caves. The book ends with the contrast of religious festival and touristic gaze as the English characters, along with Muslim protagonist Dr. Aziz, watch a festival related to Lord Krishna.

The first chapter describes the rough and tumble of Coleridge’s rambles between 1794 and 1804. The chapter opens by placing these excursions within a culture of walking. It depicts his propensity to be his own path-maker rather than follow either the directives of the picturesque guides or the assigned routes of maps. Entries in his pocket notebooks reveal Coleridge’s understanding of a landscape based both upon what his eyes could see and what his feet could register. In many respects, he becomes a surveyor who measures the terrain with his boots. Often modeling his understanding of a landscape on the spirit of geometric exercises, Coleridge measured and counted his paces over a portion of ground in order to observe its lines and angles.