Philosophical Vagabonds

Nigel Leask's lecture Philosophical Vagabonds explores an extraordinary book about two young men who undertook a walking tour through Scotland in 1801, "disguised as American sailors, with little money and no identity papers," describing their adventures and misadventures as they encountered suspicion, hostility and sometimes surprising kindness. Professor Leask brings out the two travellers' (often conflicted or self-contradictory) responses to what they saw and experienced, and shows how the tour contributed to their changing political perspective, mirroring the turn away from 1790s radicalism in better-known writers in the same years. This is an edited version of Professor Leask's 2017 Marilyn Butler Lecture, in the biennial series given at the international conferences of the British Association for Romantic Studies, in memory of the Romantic scholar Prof. Marilyn Butler, FBA (1937-2014).