By examining four sentimental travelogues written by British women travelers during the American and French Revolutions, Political Affairs of the Heart argues that this genre, by combining eyewitness authority with the language of sensibility, constitutes a significant site of women’s engagement in national and gender politics.

LINDA VAN NETTEN BLIMKE is an associate professor of English at Concordia University of Edmonton in Alberta, Canada, where she teaches eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature. She is the coeditor of Crossing Canada, 1907: Hope Hook’s Diary.
 

Introduction: Critical Contexts: Eighteenth-Century Women's Travel Writing
Part One: Mobile Feelings: Mapping the Sentimental Traveler
1 "Altogether of a Different Cast": The Development of the Sentimental Traveler
Part Two: Divided Sympathies: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the American Revolution
2 "I Am Sure You Will Share My Feelings": Janet Schaw's Journal of a Lady of Quality, Imperial Desire, and the American Revolution
3 The Ties That Bind: Sentimentalizing Colonialism in A Journey to the Highlands of Scotland
Part Three: Sensibility in Distress: Female Sentimental Travel Writers and the French Revolution
4 Revitalizing Sensibility: Mary Morgan's Defense of Emotional Engagement in A Tour to Milford Haven
5 "A Renovation of Existence": Helen Maria Williams's A Tour in Switzerland and the Renewal of Political Vision
Epilogue: "An Affair of the Heart"
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index