sexual orientation of many of the Priory guests is also given more consideration than in previousbiographies with McCormack identifying the many gay and lesbian guests that constituted thesalon community, and this invites attention to Eliot’s attitudes towards same-sex desire: McCor-mack suggests that she neither condemned nor acknowledged the same-sex relationships withinher social circle, and that an avoidance of the subject is similarly resonant in her fiction.

The regular Sunday salons ended with Lewes’ death in 1878, but a final chapter on Eliot’ssubsequent marriage to John Cross and her final European journey finishes the study. Whilenecessary for the sake of biographical completeness this is somewhat divergent from earliermaterial and adds little to the understanding of Eliot’s social life that is the focus elsewhere. None-theless, McCormack’s work stands as an insightful exploration that brings to light important bio-graphical material, constructing an engaging account of Eliot’s travel around Europe that affordsnew opportunities for reconsidering the interconnections between her life and literature in theselater years.

Charlotte MathiesonUniversity of Warwick

c.e.mathieson@warwick.ac.uk© 2014, Charlotte Mathieson

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2013.879763

No Particular Hurry: British Travellers in Finland 1830–1917, by Tony Lurcock, London, CBEditions, 2013, xvii + 258 pp., £10 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-9567359-9-7

This volume continues Tony Lurcock’s mappings of the image of Finland in British travel writingby focusing on mainly nineteenth-century experiences of travel in the Finnish Grand Duchy.While the writings collected in the previous volume Not So Barren or Uncultivated: BritishTravellers in Finland 1760–1917 (CB Editions, 2010) presented a nation difficult to reach andunprepared to welcome international travellers, the majority of the travellers included in thisvolume navigate an entirely different country that is able to accommodate the tourists in itsquality hotels. In contrast to the travellers of the eighteenth century, these British tourists areable to access several smaller and previously unachievable Finnish towns such as Tampere,Kuopio and Joensuu by using the expanding railway and steamer networks.

Like Lurcock’s previous volume, this book is an anthology aimed at Finland-minded readers,both popular and more academic. It presents selected excerpts from the writings by the Britishvisiting Finland for a variety of reasons ranging from tourism and journalism to politics andwarfare, and places them in their historical and cultural contexts. What emerges as a result is afascinating and multifaceted history of British travellers and their experiences in Finlandas well as a narrative of the development of the cultural relations between the two countries.Lurcock’s volume presents many little-known texts, published not infrequently as sections inmemoirs or in magazines, shedding new light on the British perception of Finland. In hisuseful and informative introduction to the volume, Lurcock points to the major differencesbetween the two periods: while the nineteenth-century travellers sought romantic adventures inwild landscapes populated with primitive peoples with curious customs, the travellers presentedin this volume often had an interest in Finland’s social and political position and the nation’s roleas a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire until its independence in 1917. The introduction alsodescribes the various changes concerning British travel to Finland in the period: the travellerstended to have a middle-class background, several were professional travel writers, many wereassisted by guidebooks such as Murray’s, and the means of transport and the quality of

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accommodation appear to have reached a good standard. By the beginning of the twentiethcentury, Lurcock mentions, the British travellers had also learnt of Finnish folklore and cultureowing to the 1888 publication of the English translation of The Kalevala, the Finnish nationalepic quoted frequently in their writings.

The volume is organised chronologically, which makes it possible to follow the changes inboth travel and in Finland. While the first travellers presented in the book travel by landbetween the cities of Turku and Helsinki – the conventional route from Sweden toSt. Petersburg – the later travellers board a steamer, a development that had increased thecomfort of travel. By the 1840s, the new capital city of Helsinki has taken on the leading roleformerly associated with Turku and is described by the widely travelled writer S.S. Hill as “aremarkable instance of energy and progress” (46). By the turn of the century, as for instanceHenry de Windt notes in his Finland as It Is (1901), Helsinki is “full of life and animation”(185). The nation is transforming, and Rosalind Travers, who spent an entire winter in Finland(1908–1909) and later lectured in Britain on Finland, paid particular attention to the developmentof the Finnish women’s movement in Letters from Finland (1911). In a similar vein, Sir GeorgeRenwick’s Finland Today (1911) shows sympathy for the emergent Finnish nation, and the jour-nalist Henry W. Nevinson, visiting Finland briefly in 1910, claims that “Two passions occupiedthe people’s mind – education and patriotism” (217).

The collection unearths some exceptional accounts of Finland. What is particularly note-worthy in Lurcock’s collection is the section devoted to the narratives of the Baltic War(1854–1855). The accounts of this little-known military conflict between Britain and Russiashow how the British were actively involved in destroying Finnish ports and property duringthe war; ca. 170 people were taken as prisoners of war in Bomarsund, Åland and taken toLewes, Sussex. The accounts, written by mainly British officers, as well as adventurers, havebeen collected from a variety of memoirs and contributions to magazines and open up a new per-spective on Anglo-Finnish relations. In addition to these representations, the highlights of thebook include rare descriptions of British visits to places seldom referred to in British travelwriting such as Sylvia MacDougall’s meal at the “Societetshuset” in Joensuu, Karelia, several nar-ratives by women travellers, and the hitherto little-known unpublished travelogue of the archae-ologist Arthur Evans, probably best known for his reconstruction of the Palace of Knossos inCrete. Lurcock presents the narratives of six women travellers: while Ethel Brilliana Tweedie’sThrough Finland in Carts (1894), a narrative of her summer’s journey in Finland, is widelyknown and also available in Finnish translation, the other texts by such writers as SelinaBunbury, Annie Margaret Clive-Bayley and Rosalind Travers open up interesting perspectivesonto the period’s Finland and issues of gender. The presentation of Evans’s journey to theFinnish Lapland in 1873 is particularly interesting, showing how the young scholar observes min-utely his surroundings:

The interior of the Finnish cottage we saw was very comfortable; clocks on the walls, & fiddles (theyare a very musical race), lots of handsome pipes, and curiously worked tobacco pouches; in thewindows roses, cactus, stocks & heartsease. (127)

Rather than isolated and primitive as in the travel narratives of the eighteenth century, Finlandappears to have become civilised and even welcoming as seen in this description.

In sum, the volume presents a variety of writers whose diverse narratives of Finland deserve tobe known by a larger audience. Lurcock’s anthology makes little-known texts accessible toanyone interested in the portrayal of Finland, and it also serves as a tool for scholars interestedin the cultural history of travel and Anglo-Finnish cultural relations. It should be noted,however, that the book contains surprisingly many misspellings of Finnish place names, and

Book reviews 93

that the selected bibliography on scholarly work omits some recent sources dealing with the topic.Regardless of these shortcomings, the volume is a welcome contribution that paves the way forfurther research.

Jopi NymanUniversity of Eastern Finland

jopi.nyman@uef.fi© 2014, Jopi Nyman

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645145.2014.886139

A Route 66 Companion, edited by David King Dunaway, Albuquerque, University of TexasPress, 2012, x + 179 pp., $19.95 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-292-72660-4

When I plan my college courses, I usually search for an anthology of major writers that addressesthe topic of my study. Therefore, in preparing for my Route 66 class, I reviewed several textoptions. Eventually, I found one that best met my criteria for my course. That anthology isDavid King Dunaway’s A Route 66 Companion published by the University of Texas Press.

As an adjunct instructor at a community college, I offer this “Route 66” special topics class asa study in the humanities. I try to challenge my students to explore the role this American roadwayplayed in the development of the nation’s legacy. It is a legacy spanning generations of NativeAmericans, sharecroppers and farmers from the plains, crop pickers from the Southwest, andlabourers, artists and others who have travelled on it in search of opportunities, fortunes andadventure. The route runs diagonally, northeast to southwest, across the continent fromChicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California, 2448 miles (about 4000 km), through eightstates and three time zones.

My classroom is a 14-passenger school bus, myself as driver. My students and I start ourjourney where Route 66 begins at the intersections of Michigan Avenue and Jackson Boule-vard, across from Chicago’s famed Art Institute. We then drive down Ogden Avenue, astretch of 66 and once an early Native American trail, through the towns of Cicero, Berwyn,Forest Park and Joliet and then on to Springfield, to visit Abraham Lincoln’s home andtomb and to Mother Jones’ memorial in Mt. Olive. We finally head towards our last destinationacross the Mississippi River to St. Louis, Missouri. There we pause under the Jefferson Arch,the Gateway to the West, before heading back to Chicago. For those more adventurous andunconstrained by time and obligations, I encourage them to continue the journey all the wayto Santa Monica.

Dunaway’s A Route 66 Companion is a critically chosen collection of readings. The tableof contents becomes a figurative map of the highway firstly with selections describing the pre-history of Route 66 and then the social and commercial impacts of the railroad. It is arrangedgeographically and chronologically with works from a variety of literary genres addressingthe key issues when Route 66 was a main thoroughfare in America. For example, in thefirst section is a piece from Dave Edmunds, a Cherokee Indian and professor of history atthe University of Texas in Dallas, entitled “Buffalo Hunting on Route 66” (2). HereEdmunds talks about the hunting and gathering activities of Native Americans along thisroute prior to the advent of the Europeans. Other entries in this section are from early Amer-ican authors like Washington Irving and Zane Grey who span different geographical regionsof the country.

In the section subtitled, “A Bioregional Approach to Route 66” (31) there are works frompopular American writers like Vachel Lindsay, Thomas Wolfe, Will Rogers, John Steinbeck,

94 Book reviews