Country House Tourism in Jane Austen’s Era.

Tourism in the United Kingdom, visiting grand country houses and the untamed countryside, developed in the 18th century. The diaries of the period reflect this trend containing many accounts of visiting differing parts of the country, and of course, the trip that the Gardiners and Elizabeth Bennet make to Derbyshire in Pride and Prejudice is an example of the typical tour that those who could afford,would make.Their original destination, The Lakes of Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire, were tremendously popular.

This growth in domestic tourism is because some important factors:
- Firstly, the developments in travel: if you couldn’t “get” to a country house/pleasant vale easily you obviously couldn’t visit it. Improved roads-both routes and road surfaces- and the system of posting horse and carriages for hire, made travel easier for those who could afford it. 
-Secondly, The Grand Tour of Europe, as undertaken by Edward Knight, Jane Austen’s brother, was tourism on a grand lavishly expensive and foreign scale, but it became impossible to complete. The wars with Napoleon curtailed safe travel to Europe to a large extent, and so people turned to touring England and Wales for leisure and educational purposes.