%0 Journal Article
%T Trains, bodies, landscapes. Experiencing distance in the long nineteenth century
%A Anna P. H. Geurts
%J The Journal of Transport History
%@ 1759-3999
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0022526618820877
%X The arrival of the railways has led scholars of nineteenth-century Europe to posit the thesis of a shrinking world, in which distances were annihilated and travel became a decorporealised and delocalised experience. This article uses travellers¡¯ own writings to empirically complicate this thesis by looking at which journeys were characterised as near or far, and why. Building on Massey¡¯s and Wenzlhuemer¡¯s work on the multiplicity of space and spatial power, the seemingly contradictory findings are explained by suggesting the coexistence of a number of different types of lived distance. The article thus offers a taxonomy of sorts, outlining those distance types that were experienced most often by western-European travellers ¨C grounded in physical effort, landscape elements and other often highly specific, material characteristics of their journeys. Together, they suggest that distances remained a tangible reality to travellers, firmly anchored in their bodies and the physical spaces they occupied and traversed
%K Conceptions of distance
%K embodiment
%K environmental history
%K class
%K gender
%K travel writing
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022526618820877