People

  • On the road with Joseph Andrews

    Many of the earliest novels were effectively ‘stories of the road’, their plots centred on the journeys their heroes were making – books such as Don Quixote and The Pilgrim’s Progress – while the form is still popular today e.g. The Lord of the Rings. This format provided the possibility of introducing a rich cast…

    ,

  • Clegg’s travels

    James Clegg (1679 -1755) was for many years a minister at Chinley Chapel, near Chapel-en-le-Frith in north Derbyshire. There are no surviving pictures of him, but we know more about his life than is usual thanks to his diary, which he kept from 1708 until his death. As it was frequently necessary at that time…

    ,

  • Afoot with Karl Moritz

    Karl Moritz was a prolific German writer who, in 1782, spent two months touring England, reaching as far north as Derbyshire. Clearly an adventurous character, what is especially striking is that he traveled on foot, when all but the poorest went on horseback. This gives his writings an unusual perspective, and his experiences, at a…

    ,

  • Riding with Cobbett – 2

    In the early modern period, gentlemen – and the more daring ladies – preferred to travel on horseback. William Cobbett, touring England in 1822 for his masterpiece ‘Rural Rides’, explains this preference: My object was … to see the country… and to do this you must either go on foot or on horseback. With a…

    ,

  • Riding with Cobbett -1

    William Cobbett (1762-1835) was a radical farmer, journalist and campaigner who travelled extensively in England in the 1820s and 1830s, inspecting the state of farming and farm workers. His reports, collected as Rural Rides, also give us a picture of life on the roads in those decades before the railways radically changed patterns of travel.…