The Irish revival en route: the travel writing of William Bulfin and Robert Lynd

Abstract

Travel writing about Ireland composed by Irish artists and activists affiliated with Revival movements proliferated in transnational print media at the turn of the twentieth century and participated in the decolonising impetus of many revivalist initiatives. First this article maps itineraries of activism trodden by these Irish travel writers, and then subsequently examines two case-studies of expatriate Irish journalists and activists, William Bulfin (1863–1910) and Robert Lynd (1879–1949), who published travel books. Both travelled around Ireland and reported on it from the perspective of diasporic groups, the Irish in Argentina for Bulfin and the Irish in London for Lynd. This article argues that their travel books – Bulfin’s Rambles in Éirinn (1907) and Lynd’s Rambles in Ireland (1912) – complicate the geographies of activism of the Revival, illuminating the international outreach of Revival movements. Moreover, these texts also problematise essentialist notions of Irish identity and expose some of the contradictions inherent in the modernising and conservationist impulses of the Revival project.