Journal of a Tour in Scotland in 1819
JOUivi^AL OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND IN 1819 By ROBERT SOUTHEY With an Introduction and Notes By Professor C. H. Herford, M.A., Litt.D., F.B.A, los. 6d. net See Inside Fiap 315. In 1819 Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, in company with Telford, the great engineer, made a compre- hensive tour through Scotland, and, being a true bookman, kept a record of the people met and the things seen during their journey. Although no years have passed since then, that Journal has not been published. Yet it has its fresh interest to readers generally and its particular value to social historians and to Scots, for with sincerity and grace Southey wrote down promptly what he saw, and he was no mean observer of his times. JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND IN 1819 ROBERT SOUTHEY From the. portrait In/ T. PhlUips, R.A. [Frontispiece JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND IN 1819 BY ROBERT SOUTHEY WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY C. H. HERFORD, M.A., Litt.D., F.B.A. HONORARY PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THK UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. First Edition 1929 PREFACE The manuscript of this Journal, which is in the library of the Institution of Civil Engineers, was presented to that library in 1885 by the late Sir Robert Rawlinson, K.C.B., who was President of the Institution in 1894-5. It bears a note by him to the effect that he purchased it in Keswick from the Rev. Mr Southey in August 1864. The exhibition of the manuscript on the occasion of the celebration, in June 1928, of the Centenary of the grant of a Royal Charter to the Institution—obtained largely through the instrumentality of Thomas Telford, its first President—drew attention to the interest of the Journal, not only as a contemporary account of the great works which Telford was then carrying out in Scotland, but also as the diary of a shrewd and travelled observer, depicting social and industrial conditions in Scotland in the early years of the nineteenth century.
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