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The Lure of the Sea: The Discovery of the Seaside in the Western World, 1750-1840
This wonderful book explores the dramatic change in Western attitude toward the sea and seaside pleasures that occurred between 1750 and 1840. Interest in travel; the arrival of landscape painting, geology, and natural theology; fashions in medicine and the advent of the bathing-machine; the emergence of Romanticism and the Sublime—these are only some of the elements that helped transform perceptions.
There was no sea in the Garden of Eden, and for centuries the Earth’s ocean was looked upon with hostility, as a chaotic remnant of the flood. But by the time Jane Austen wrote Sandition —perhaps the first ‘seaside’ novel—in 1817, the sea and shore had come to be viewed as something intensely and sensuously pleasurable, with beach holidays all the rage in new resorts from Brighton and Scarborough to Dieppe.
“A compact and brilliant taxonomy of the shifting meanings of the sea and shore.”— The New York Review of Books
There was no sea in the Garden of Eden, and for centuries the Earth’s ocean was looked upon with hostility, as a chaotic remnant of the flood. But by the time Jane Austen wrote Sandition —perhaps the first ‘seaside’ novel—in 1817, the sea and shore had come to be viewed as something intensely and sensuously pleasurable, with beach holidays all the rage in new resorts from Brighton and Scarborough to Dieppe.
“A compact and brilliant taxonomy of the shifting meanings of the sea and shore.”— The New York Review of Books
400 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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300 people want to read
About the author
Alain Corbin
141 books88 followersAlain Corbin is a French historian, specialist of the 19th century in France.
Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités. His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.
Trained in the Annales School, Corbin's work has moved away from the large-scale collective structures studied by Fernand Braudel towards a history of sensibilities which is closer to Lucien Febvre's history of mentalités. His books have explored the histories of such subjects as male desire and prostitution, sensory experience of smell and sound, and the 1870 burning of a young nobleman in a Dordogne village.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 1, 2021
Very good book on the history of our view on the sea in literature and culture in general. I enjoyed more the parts about older views (as in antique and renaissance) but everything is very nice, easy to read and full of examples.
January 29, 2025
Un saggio di 300 pagine con un excursus di più di due secoli che mi ha spiegato perché io d’estate ami stare su uno scoglio a Barcola tutto il giorno. W il mare
February 16, 2017
Ein schöner Fund. Eigentlich bin ich kein großer Freund von kulturhistorischen Monographien aber diese ist wirklich gelungen. Mit sprachlicher Eleganz betrachtet der Autor den Blick auf das Meer an sich in der zeit vom Barock bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Gewitzt und in der gebotenen Kürze fliegt der Autor von den Bademoden über die Handelsdynamik bis zur Kunstgeschichte, wobei er nie langweilt und jeder- allein aufgrund der Multidiszipliniertheit des Ansatzes - etwas dazu lernt. Der einzige Wehrmutstropfen besteht darin, dass der Autor sich - abgesehen von den abgebildeten Kunstwerken - bei seinen Quellen fast nur auf Englische und Französische Blickwinkel konzentriert, weswegen der Blick selten abgerundet ist.
November 4, 2024
this is the third book that I know has been on my to-be-read shelf for at least 20 years, as evinced by an old photograph. all of them were fat non-fiction books - I started this one once before but only got to page 31.
it's not quite what I expected. my interest in the subject is mainly an interest in the beach as a place where social rules are suspended. where else do you essentially lie on the ground in your underwear among crowds of people? this book concentrates on 1750 to 1840 in the british isles and continental europe, so it doesn't get to bikinis.
the author is a french historian, which I noticed when I started reading and the language seemed a bit weird - it's a translation. he hasn't really organized it chronologically as you might expect with a history. he takes these focal years and sort of looks at different aspects of the beach - how it came into play with wealthy tourists doing the grand tour of europe, particularly with respect to places mentioned in roman literature, how it is used by people for cold water bathing for health treatments, a lot of art history - is it a view of the sea from far off, is it a seascape, does it depict people working on the shore (fishing, cockling, burning seaweed into soda ash, etc.), is it a shipwreck painting (a whole genre because shipwrecks were extremely common). finally seaside resorts are developed for the aristocracy and royalty, and then the lower classes follow suit, coming for shorter periods than the entire summer.
one thing corbin is very careful about is to discover contemporary attitudes towards his subject, without conflating present day feelings with past behavior. he starts off with christian attitudes towards the sea as untamed chaos left over from the time of creation/the remnants of god's wrath in the form of the flood, left as sort of a warning. not exactly the kind of place you want to go on holiday. there was also a very interesting attitude later towards the mediterranean as a very disease ridden unhealthy ocean emanating ill health and dangerous miasmas etc. whereas cold north sea beaches were considered extremely healthful and purifying. it makes you wonder how much of our perceptions now of glorious mediterranean beaches as vastly superior to cold rocky northern beaches are just as much superstitious and exaggerated.
he gets a little french theorist at points talking about the desire to be consumed and eroticism and primordial family circles reforming. I had to look a lot of things up because I was educated in the US in the 70s and 80s and there was very little in the way of the classics of virgil and cicero and seneca.
there were some illustrations in a section of glossy pages, but he only seemed to refer to a few of them in the text, leaving the others as total mysteries. he refers to the romantics a lot but unfortunately never has a section explicitly about them.
there were some surprising elements - there was a decline in fisheries during this period, and that led to some fairly modern attempts at conservation. 5000 english people died every year in shipwrecks in this period, which was a shock, as was the bloodthirsty appetite for paintings of shipwrecks in progress, and even watching shipwrecks as part of tourism, as most of them happened near the coast on rocks.
in the end, the romans loved a seaside resort, and then you had these europeans reading all these classical latin works but viewing the sea as loathsome, and then this gradual approach, through geology and science de-emphasizing the biblical timeline, through changing fashions in the grand tour and art, which fed into each other, through science again, health, viewing the sea as health-giving (although not the sun!) until you get brighton and blackpool, etc. so even though it wasn't what I thought I was getting, it was interesting - corbin definitely seems to have read a lot of travel journals by people doing their grand tours, he's gone really in depth with this, whereas for me, it's just interesting, I don't know what I'll retain from it.
it's not quite what I expected. my interest in the subject is mainly an interest in the beach as a place where social rules are suspended. where else do you essentially lie on the ground in your underwear among crowds of people? this book concentrates on 1750 to 1840 in the british isles and continental europe, so it doesn't get to bikinis.
the author is a french historian, which I noticed when I started reading and the language seemed a bit weird - it's a translation. he hasn't really organized it chronologically as you might expect with a history. he takes these focal years and sort of looks at different aspects of the beach - how it came into play with wealthy tourists doing the grand tour of europe, particularly with respect to places mentioned in roman literature, how it is used by people for cold water bathing for health treatments, a lot of art history - is it a view of the sea from far off, is it a seascape, does it depict people working on the shore (fishing, cockling, burning seaweed into soda ash, etc.), is it a shipwreck painting (a whole genre because shipwrecks were extremely common). finally seaside resorts are developed for the aristocracy and royalty, and then the lower classes follow suit, coming for shorter periods than the entire summer.
one thing corbin is very careful about is to discover contemporary attitudes towards his subject, without conflating present day feelings with past behavior. he starts off with christian attitudes towards the sea as untamed chaos left over from the time of creation/the remnants of god's wrath in the form of the flood, left as sort of a warning. not exactly the kind of place you want to go on holiday. there was also a very interesting attitude later towards the mediterranean as a very disease ridden unhealthy ocean emanating ill health and dangerous miasmas etc. whereas cold north sea beaches were considered extremely healthful and purifying. it makes you wonder how much of our perceptions now of glorious mediterranean beaches as vastly superior to cold rocky northern beaches are just as much superstitious and exaggerated.
he gets a little french theorist at points talking about the desire to be consumed and eroticism and primordial family circles reforming. I had to look a lot of things up because I was educated in the US in the 70s and 80s and there was very little in the way of the classics of virgil and cicero and seneca.
there were some illustrations in a section of glossy pages, but he only seemed to refer to a few of them in the text, leaving the others as total mysteries. he refers to the romantics a lot but unfortunately never has a section explicitly about them.
there were some surprising elements - there was a decline in fisheries during this period, and that led to some fairly modern attempts at conservation. 5000 english people died every year in shipwrecks in this period, which was a shock, as was the bloodthirsty appetite for paintings of shipwrecks in progress, and even watching shipwrecks as part of tourism, as most of them happened near the coast on rocks.
in the end, the romans loved a seaside resort, and then you had these europeans reading all these classical latin works but viewing the sea as loathsome, and then this gradual approach, through geology and science de-emphasizing the biblical timeline, through changing fashions in the grand tour and art, which fed into each other, through science again, health, viewing the sea as health-giving (although not the sun!) until you get brighton and blackpool, etc. so even though it wasn't what I thought I was getting, it was interesting - corbin definitely seems to have read a lot of travel journals by people doing their grand tours, he's gone really in depth with this, whereas for me, it's just interesting, I don't know what I'll retain from it.
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June 29, 2009This courtesy of BetterWorldBooks and the ex-property of Queens Borough Library. An absolute bargain.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews