Information, Medium & Society: Twenty-second International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

Watching the daily news, traveling, teaching classes, remembering family, we all encounter the past—at various times more clearly and more personally than at others. Our personal memory preserves the images of our lives, but how has our memory of things beyond our experience been created and preserved? Why have certain details of history been forgotten and more trivial facts have persevered? There are few universal answers, but travel has proven to a great way to enhance how we realize the past and help to foster heritage preservation. In the case of Britain’s Cavendish family, the Dukes and Duchesses of Devonshire, we get a view of how travel enabled family members to develop and preserve the cultural heritage we now enjoy from ancient Rome. From their accumulated letters and memoirs, we get a view of how travel in Italy inspired family members to become collectors and patrons of Italian art, helping to develop and preserve the cultural heritage of Modern Italy. This paper pays close attention to how Cavendish women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when residing or traveling in Italy, participated in the rediscovery and preservation of Rome’s historical heritage and shaped what we know of ancient Rome today.