AMERICAN TRAVELLERS IN LIVERPOOL

Liverpool was the first port of call for American travellers arriving in England from 1815 when regular transatlantic voyages were introduced. The advent of steamships in 1838 reduced the length of the voyage but not the risk. During the early 19th century travel writing developed as a popular genre, as American visitors lingered in Liverpool before moving on into Europe and even the Holy Land and the East. Common themes are admiration of Liverpool's commercial energy combined with astonishment at how brazen the prostitutes were. A transatlantic visitor might not realise that a gentleman was not expected to carry his own luggage, and difficulty in understanding the local accent provides some amusing incidents. The Canadian Elizabeth Forbes expected Liverpool to be dirty, dingy and crowded, but found herself admiring the docklands architecture and clean pavement. Customs checks could be speeded up by a tip, though the officials made rigorous searches for smuggled tobacco. In 1863 the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, who served as American Consul, published his experiences in a collection of essays, including descriptions of walking round the slums. Henry James wrote about his first evening in Liverpool's luxurious Adelphi Hotel. The bird painter John James Audubon arrived in 1826 and moved on to Edinburgh where he found an engraver who illustrated his celebrated Birds of America and Herman Melville refers to the docks in his novel Redburn. Liverpool had been both a key part of the slave trade and also an important centre for abolition, and the former slave William Wells Brown settled there to write his memoir Three Years in Europe. Liverpool helped writers to liberate their voices in a free discussion of slavery, hosting lectures by speakers such as Amanda Berry Smith, a former slave, the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote "The hospitality of England has become famous in the world, and, I think, with reason". A fascinating collection of travellers' stories. 300pp, paperback, many illus including colour plates.