Complete Gentlemen is the first study to look beyond the Italian Grand Tour to the wider culture of educational travel that thrived among British and Irish landowners between 1650 and 1750. The ‘lure of Italy’ still distorts most scholarship, but this study uses a broader conception of educational travel and analyses it as part of family strategy. Different experiences emerged from the varying means, ambitions and obligations of families, who invested time, money and effort in the hope of social return. Historians usually pick up travellers as they arrive on the Continent and drop them as they ... More

Complete Gentlemen is the first study to look beyond the Italian Grand Tour to the wider culture of educational travel that thrived among British and Irish landowners between 1650 and 1750. The ‘lure of Italy’ still distorts most scholarship, but this study uses a broader conception of educational travel and analyses it as part of family strategy. Different experiences emerged from the varying means, ambitions and obligations of families, who invested time, money and effort in the hope of social return. Historians usually pick up travellers as they arrive on the Continent and drop them as they recross the Channel, but this book also pays unprecedented attention to what families thought and did before, after and instead of time abroad, stages that are equally important to understanding its meanings. This new approach requires a deep source base over several generations, provided by the letters, journals and financial accounts of four clusters of families from England and Ireland. They allow the book to relate travel, too often a stand-alone topic, to broader questions in social and cultural history. It can therefore examine the role of time abroad in social mobility and elite formation, as well as its meanings for landed identity, masculinity and Englishness.