Abstract:

Female overseas travel has long been viewed as a niche activity involving only a handful of privileged elites. In his book ‘The Traveiler’ (1575), Jerome Turler cast moral aspersions on female travellers, describing them as ‘wide wandring Weemen’. However, an extensive review of the surviving evidence, drawing on underused sources, including the King’s Remembrancer records and diplomatic correspondence, suggests that European travel by English women was far more widespread than previously acknowledged. This article surveys the findings of a new database of over 2100 journeys made by English women to Europe between 1558 and 1630. From this information, it is now possible to construct a more complex understanding of both the extent and nature of female mobility than was previously supposed both by modern historians of travel and earlier commentators such as Jerome Turler.

摘要：

长期以来，女性海外旅行一直被视为只涉及少数特权精英的小众活动。杰罗姆·特勒 (Jerome Turler) 在其著作《旅行者》(1575) 中对女性旅行者进行了道德诽谤，将她们描述为“宽阔的流浪者”。然而，对现存证据的广泛审查，利用未充分利用的资料，包括国王纪念者的记录和外交信函，表明英国妇女的欧洲旅行比之前承认的要广泛得多。本文调查了一个新数据库的调查结果，该数据库收录了 1558 年至 1630 年间英国女性前往欧洲的 2100 多次旅行。根据这些信息，现在可以对女性流动的程度和性质建立比以前更复杂的理解。现代旅行史学家和杰罗姆·特勒等早期评论家都认为这一点。