Article ID: CBB903493167

Road-testing the first turnpikes. The enduring value of Daniel Defoe’s account of English highways (August 2019)

unapi

A famous appendix, devoted mainly to the state of English roads, appeared in the second volume of Daniel Defoe’s Tour thro’ the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724–26). Though cited on countless occasions by historians over almost three centuries, the text has never been properly edited with detailed attention to its coverage of the newly emergent method of maintaining roads through the establishment of turnpike trusts. In default, this study seeks to describe major features of the account, to indicate its timeliness, and to set out the factors which enabled Defoe to provide an unrivalled picture of the communications network of his time. The appendix carries even more weight because it fills out a comprehensive survey of road conditions throughout the text, as part of the author’s overall design in the Tour. This shows the interdependence of separate regions of the country, bound together in a system centred on London.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB903493167/

Similar Citations

Book Wall, Cynthia; (2006)
The Prose of Things: Transformations of Description in the Eighteenth Century (/isis/citation/CBB000775246/)

Article Peter Walmsley; (2018)
The African Artisan Meets the English Sailor: Technology and the Savage for Defoe (/isis/citation/CBB509041659/)

Article Avila-Pires, Fernando Dias de; (2007)
Robinson Crusoe's Illness: Literature and Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB001030483/)

Article Markley, Robert; (2008)
“Casualties and Disasters”: Defoe and the Interpretation of Climatic Instability (/isis/citation/CBB001032329/)

Article Ewers, Chris; (2014)
Roads as Regions, Networks and Flows: Waverley and the `Periphery' of Romance (/isis/citation/CBB001451639/)

Book Julian Glover; (2017)
Man of Iron: Thomas Telford and the Building of Britain (/isis/citation/CBB440677065/)

Book Vickers, Ilse; (1996)
Defoe and the new sciences (/isis/citation/CBB000071999/)

Article Parkes, Christopher; (1995)
“A true survey of the ground”: Defoe's Tour and the rise of thematic cartography (/isis/citation/CBB000070920/)

Book Schmidt, Benjamin; (2015)
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe's Early Modern World (/isis/citation/CBB001510111/)

Chapter Schaffer, Simon; (1989)
Defoe's natural philosophy and the worlds of credit (/isis/citation/CBB000059103/)

Book Colin Divall; Ralf Roth; (2015)
From Rail to Road and Back Again? A Century of Transport Competition and Interdependency (/isis/citation/CBB432387366/)

Article Gunn, Simon; (2011)
The Buchanan Report, Environment and the Problem of Traffic in 1960s Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001230920/)

Book Gordon Dickinson; David Bower; (2019)
Britannia's Roads: An Introduction to the Strip Maps of John Ogilby's Britannia,1675 (/isis/citation/CBB303759901/)

Authors & Contributors
Glover, Julian
Matthew Binney
Dickinson, Gordon
Nixon, Kari
Ewers, Chris
Wyatt, John F.
Concepts
Science and literature
Roads and highways
Geography
Science
Maps; atlases
Cartography
Time Periods
18th century
17th century
20th century
Early modern
19th century
Places
Great Britain
British Isles
Europe
Mozambique
England
Wales
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment