Visitors’ books and travel narratives: the case of romantic Vesuvius, 1826–1828

ABSTRACT This article focuses on a surviving visitors’ book that covers the years 1826–1828, kept at the Hermitage on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. The article sets out both its value and limitations as a historical source, contrasting it with the more fully developed personal narrative typical of travel literature, and argues that its (and other visitors’ books) supposed limitations (their anecdotal and fragmentary character) may also be a strength. Such books express and capture an experience of travel that is collective and social, and reveal a body of travellers (not authors) that is both more numerous and varied than in single-author accounts. The article’s final remarks frame the relationship between this visitors’ book and travel literature as a collision between the literary forms of the anecdote and the narrative.