The Georgian Seaside: The English resorts before the railway age

Long before the Victorians the Georgian elite made the English seaside their playground Discover the invention of the English seaside holiday in the days when royalty was ruthlessly dunked beneath the waves, when lodging houses catered for dukes and where resort visitors ranged from dying consumptives to marriageable misses to scandalous rakes – and the Prince Regent at his most outrageous. From the origins of sea bathing in the 16th century to the pinnacle of sophisticated Assembly Rooms, hotels and bathing establishments, this book charts the rise of the English seaside resorts before the arrival of the railways in the 1840s heralded the arrival of mass tourism and changed the way the English took their holidays for ever. Long before the Victorians every English county with a coastline had its resort with piers, sandcastles on the beach, donkey rides, sea bathing, souvenirs and the seaside landlady – this is the story of how, and why, they grew.