Abstract
This chapter considers the representation of Cornwall as a dark touristic site in nineteenth-century travel guides, in the works of Arthur Conan Doyle and Wilkie Collins, and in tourist sites today that promote themselves as Gothic. In the nineteenth-century Cornwall was undergoing radical changes, one of which was its sudden popularity as a tourist destination with advancements in transportation. In writing throughout the period, the county is represented as distant, foreign, and barbarous—a site for Gothic encounters. Many of these representations suggest that traveling into Cornwall means traveling into the distant past, and many tourist destinations aim to recreate a savage past to create a sense of both spatial and temporal dislocation.
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- 1.
“Giant miner puppet walks through Cornwall,” BBC News (July 25, 2016), http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-36882234 (accessed August 1, 2016).
- 2.
Philip Payton and Paul Thornton, “The Great Western Railway and the Cornish-Celtic Revival,” Cornish Studies 3 (1995): 83–103.
- 3.
Ibid.
- 4.
Paul Thornton, “Tourism in Cornwall: Recent Research and Current Trends,” Cornish Studies 2 (1994): 108–127 and Paul Thornton, “Changes in the ‘Tourist Gaze,’” Cornish Studies 1 (1993): 80–96.
- 5.
John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990), 4–5.
- 6.
James Walvin, Leisure and Society, 1830–1950 (Longman: London, 1978), 13.
- 7.
J. John Lennon and Malcolm Foley , Dark Tourism : The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London: Continuum, 2000).
- 8.
Emma McEvoy, Gothic Tourism (London: Springer, 2016), 201.
- 9.
Catherine Spooner, Post-Millennial Gothic: Comedy, Romance, and the Rise of the Happy Gothic (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 166.
- 10.
Alison Byerly, Are We There Yet?: Virtual Travel and Victorian Realism (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2012), 1.
- 11.
Ibid., 2.
- 12.
Robert Mighall, A Geography of Victorian Gothic Fiction: Mapping History’s Nightmares (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
- 13.
Wilkie Collins, Rambles Beyond Railways; or, Notes on Cornwall Taken Afoot (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1852).
- 14.
Ibid., x.
- 15.
Ibid., 3.
- 16.
Ibid., 17.
- 17.
Ibid., 104–5.
- 18.
Wilkie Collins, Basil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- 19.
Wilkie Collins , The Dead Secret (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).
- 20.
Adam Black and Charles Black, Black’s Guide to the Duchy of Cornwall: with map and illustrations (Edinburgh: Black’s Guides, 1876).
- 21.
Adam Black and Charles Black, Black’s Guide to Cornwall (Edinburgh: Black’s Guides, 1892).
- 22.
Ibid., 58.
- 23.
Ibid., 64.
- 24.
Ibid. In this passage Black’s Guide is quoting J. Britton and E. W. Brayley, Devonshire & Cornwall illustrated, from original drawings by T. Allom, W.H. Bartlett, &c. (Fisher & Fisher, 1832), 48.
- 25.
Black and Black, Black’s Guide, 80.
- 26.
Ibid., 76.
- 27.
Ibid., 88.
- 28.
John Betjeman , Summoned by Bells (London: Murray, 1960), 34–41.
- 29.
Jamaica Inn, http://www.jamaicainn.co.uk (accessed April 25, 2017).
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Philip Stone , “Consuming Dark Tourism: A Thanatological Perspective,” Annals of Tourism Research 35, no. 2 (2008): 574.
- 32.
Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (New York: Harper and Rowe, 1964), 10.
- 33.
Debra Kamin, “The Rise of Dark Tourism,” The Atlantic, July 15, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/07/the-rise-of-dark-tourism/374432/ (accessed August 1, 2016).
- 34.
Bodmin Jail, http://www.bodminjail.org/ (accessed April 25, 2017).
- 35.
Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Adventures of the Devil’s Foot,” sherlock-holm.es (accessed April 25, 2017).
- 36.
Ibid., 1.
- 37.
Ibid.
- 38.
Ibid.
- 39.
Ibid.
- 40.
John Lowerson, “Celtic Tourism—Some Recent Magnets,” Cornish Studies 2 (1994): 130.
- 41.
Ibid., 129.
- 42.
Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot,” 4.
- 43.
Ibid., 3.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid., 4.
- 46.
Ibid., 5.
- 47.
Ibid., 1.
- 48.
Ibid., 7.
- 49.
Yasha Wallin, “Street Art Behind Plexi: Ridiculous or Reverence?” Flavorwire, March 10, 2011, http://flavorwire.com/159532/street-art-behind-plexi-ridiculous-or-reverence (accessed August 1, 2016).
- 50.
“Banksy Walking Tour,” Visit Bristol, http://visitbristol.co.uk/things-to-do/banksy-walking-tour-p1354013 (accessed August 1, 2016). See also “Bansky’s Dismaland gloom a joyful memory from the seaside,” BBC News, September 27, 2015, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-34330108 (accessed August 1, 2016); Mark Brown, “Banksy’s Dismaland: ‘amusements and anarchism’ in artist’s biggest project yet,” The Guardian, August 20, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/aug/20/banksy-dismaland-amusements-anarchism-weston-super-mare (accessed August 1, 2016).
- 51.
“The Man Engine,” Lottery Good Causes, n.d., https://www.lotterygoodcauses.org.uk/project/man-engine (accessed July 4, 2017).
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Passey, J. (2018). “Imagined Ghosts on Unfrequented Roads”: Gothic Tourism in Nineteenth-Century Cornwall. In: McDaniel, K.N. (eds) Virtual Dark Tourism. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74687-6_3
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