Christopher Mulvey has entered the world of travelers writing about their journeys abroad--Americans in their travels through England, and the English in their forays to the United States--during the eighty years following the War of 1812. The writings of travelers from one country about the other dispel the myth that good manners were a universal value and that variations were to be explained in terms of moral or political corruptions of either nation. The impact of such different yet somehow familiar cultures is highlighted in chapters that explore the contemporary issues of the...

Christopher Mulvey has entered the world of travelers writing about their journeys abroad--Americans in their travels through England, and the English in their forays to the United States--during the eighty years following the War of 1812. The writings of travelers from one country about the other dispel the myth that good manners were a universal value and that variations were to be explained in terms of moral or political corruptions of either nation. The impact of such different yet somehow familiar cultures is highlighted in chapters that explore the contemporary issues of the...

During the nineteenth century some hundreds of Englishmen and Americans visited each other's country and then published account of their journeys in the form of travel books. In his examination of the aesthetic values inherent in such books and the national prejudices and preconceptions betrayed by their authors, Christopher Mulvey has written a fascinating and entertaining chapter in nineteenth-century cultural history. The apprehensive Englishmen went to America as to a laboratory in which democracy was under investigation - as if to an England of the future. The sentimental American went...