This book is about the rise of a new ethos in British mountaineering during the late nineteenth century. It traces how British attitudes to mountains were transformed by developments both within the new sport of mountaineering and in the wider fin-de-siècle culture. The emergence of the new genre of mountaineering literature, which helped to create a self-conscious community of climbers with broadly shared values, coincided with a range of cultural and scientific trends that also influenced the direction of mountaineering. The author discusses the growing preoccupation with the physical basis of aesthetic sensations, and with physicality and materiality in general; the new interest in the physiology of effort and fatigue; and the characteristically Victorian drive to enumerate, codify, and classify. Examining a wide range of texts, from memoirs and climbing club journals to hotel visitors' books, he argues that the figure known as the 'New Mountaineer' was seen to embody a distinctly modern approach to mountain climbing and mountain aesthetics.

Examines the figure of the 'New Mountaineer' as well as the new genre of 'mountaineering literature' Examines a wide range of texts, from journals to mountaineering memoirs Connects the figure of the New Mountaineer to wider preoccupations of late-Victorian society, such as a growing interest in the physiology of effort and fatigue, and the notion of the human body as a kind of motor or machine

Autorentext

Alan McNee is a former journalist. He completed his PhD at Birkbeck, University of London in 2013. His first book was a biography of the Victorian journalist, showman, and traveller, Albert Smith.

Inhalt
Introduction.- 1. The Rise of the New Mountaineer.- 2. Resisting the New Mountaineer.- 3. The Climbing Body.- 4. The Haptic Sublime.- 5. 'Trippers' and the New Mountain Landscape.- Conclusion.- Glossary.- Bibliography.- Index.