Peak pursuits: the emergence of mountaineering in the nineteenth century [book review]

Huggins, Mike ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2789-4756 (2021) Peak pursuits: the emergence of mountaineering in the nineteenth century [book review]. Cultural and Social History, 18 (4). pp. 594-596.

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Abstract

The complex encounters between people and mountains have attracted a very substantial literature, with well over 2000 books on mountaineering in the British Library alone. This is a sensitive and well-written addition to the genre. Caroline Schaumann is a professor of German Studies who approaches her topic through insights drawn partly from literary analysis and criticism, but also in a strongly inter-disciplinary way, studying the liminal mountain world through perspectives that range across cultural history, art history, sociology, tourism, gender, philosophy, and geography. Her book is not a standard history of rock climbing but rather a transnational view of the nineteenth-century emergence of mountaineering via the writings and artistic and photographic depictions associated with eleven richly–diverse individuals drawn from Britain, Europe and North America, in a subtle and highly nuanced way. Each writer is chosen because he had a significant influence on future global cultural understandings of, and discourse about, mountain exploration and climbing.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	Cultural and Social History
Publisher:	Taylor and Francis Group
ISSN:	1478-0046
Departments:	Institute of Arts > Humanities
Additional Information:	Mike Huggins reviews the book 'Peak pursuits: the emergence of mountaineering in the nineteenth century' by Caroline Schaumann, Yale University Press, 2020, ISBN 9780300231946.
Depositing User:	Insight Administrator
SWORD Depositor:	Insight Administrator
Date Deposited:	21 Apr 2021 10:46
Last Modified:	13 Jan 2024 12:01
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/6040

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