British Travellers in Mallorca in the 19th Century: An Anthology of Texts
by Brian J. Dendle and Shelby Thacker

    Today Mallorca is a favored vacation haunt of travelers from Germany, the United Kingdom, and Scandinavia. For most of the nineteenth century, however, difficulties of transportation and its reputed “miasmic” climate discouraged foreign visitors to Mallorca.
    In the present anthology, Brian Dendle and Shelby Thacker present texts by seven British visitors to Mallorca published between 1811 and 1888. The texts reveal British reactions to the beauty of the island, the courtesy, honesty and cleanliness of its inhabitants, and the absence of poverty. Negative aspects of Mallorcan life were the prejudice against descendents of Jews, the lack of social life for foreigners, the indolent of the upper classes, absence of hygiene, unhealthy climate, and food not suited to British tastes.
    Some British travelers were strongly prejudiced, denouncing Mallorcans (and Spaniards in general) as backward, slothful, and superstitious. Those travelers who could speak Spanish and who knew Spain, on the other hand, offered far more favorable opinions: E. G. Bartholomew, William Dodd, and Charles Toll Bidwell note the considerable material progress and prosperity of Mallorca, the deep religious reverence of the people, the conscientious clergy, and an elementary educational system superior to that of England.
    Finally, Dendle and Thacker quote from the 1890 edition of Richard Ford's A Handbook for Travellers in Spain which strongly encourages tourists to visit Mallorca.

143 pp., ISBN: 1-58871-100-5, PB, 2006. $18.95