Dogs, Servants and Masculinities: Writing About Danger on the Grand Tour

The eighteenth‐century Grand Tour has typically been conceptualised as dominated by Classical aesthetics and Frenchified politeness. This article reconsiders the Grand Tour's status by examining how experiences of danger were constructed by aristocratic and gentry Grand Tourists and their families, friends and tutors. Based on their manuscript journals and letters and related publications, it identifies several narrative strategies, including the utilisation of servants and dogs as emotional others and extensions of the self, and argues that danger formed a crucial aspect of the Grand Tour, through which elite masculine virtues could be formed and adult masculine identities constructed.