About the trip

Participants will visit stately homes, landscapes, and cathedrals in the English midlands, Yorkshire, and the border of Wales to see the places and spaces that have inspired writers, artists, and congregants for centuries. From Chatsworth to the Brontё Parsonage Museum, we will visit sites depicted in the novels of Jane Austen and the village home where the Bronte sisters wrote and set their works, and we’ll see places important to writers such as Lord Tennyson and Agatha Christie. Stops in Lincoln, York, and Chester offer guided tours of cathedrals and ruins where pilgrims have sought spiritual succor for centuries. Throughout the journey, English landscapes reveal the spirit of place that has urged poets and philosophers to explore the relationship of the human mind to Nature’s presence. The readings, lectures, and discussions will explore the historic significance and cultural influence of these places and their effects on the human imagination. 

 

 

Program Leaders

 
Dr. Meg Cronin   Dr. Steve Reno
Dr. Meoghan Cronin teaches nineteenth-century British literature and specializes in the Victorian novel. She also offers courses in Detective Fiction and the Gothic Novel. Her published work focuses on the fiction of Mary Shelley, Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Brontë, and others. Her scholarship examines the influences of religion and other forms of belief on young women in fiction—and, most recently, on nineteenth-century children’s books. Dr. Cronin is a Board member of the Nineteenth-century Studies Association, and she has been involved with the Dickens Society for many years, as a trustee, a committee member, and a conference presenter, and a book reviewer for the Dickens Quarterly . She has given many public talks and presentations about poetry and novels, and she teaches these subjects in to NH high school students and in adult learning programs.

 

 
Dr. Stephen Reno’s academic field is comparative religion, with particular interest in sacred spaces, rituals, mythology, and symbolism. He has taught and been a guest lecturer at universities in the United States, United Kingdom and on the Continent. His published scholarship examines differences and similarities among traditional and contemporary religious expressions such as sites and structures, ceremonies, symbols, and religious festivals. Dr. Reno is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Winchester (UK) and was Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Center for the Study of World Religion. In addition to his academic interests, he has served as President of Southern Oregon University, Chancellor of the University System of New Hampshire, and most recently retired as Executive Director of Leadership New Hampshire.
Top