Wanderings by the Seine

Wanderings By The Seine by Leitch Ritchie is a Victorian-era pedestrian travelogue that threads a narrative journey along the Seine from its embouchure to Rouen. Interwoven with readings of historical episodes, architectural sketches, and literary asides, the work blends practical guidance for travelers—enlivened by Turner’s engravings—with intermittent romance and adventure episodes, such as the story of Aignan Lecomte and Matilde Saint-Amand. The prose surveys Havre, Harfleur, Lillebonne, and Rouen, presenting ruins, churches, battlements, and landscapes in lavish, antiquarian detail. Turner’s engravings accompany the text, offering visual counterparts to the sites described: the embouchure, towers, cathedrals, and marvellous coastlines. The volume doubles as a guide and a meditation on history, fame, and the passing of medieval and renaissance glory into modernity. A curious composite of travelogue, antiquarian homage, and romantic fiction, Wanderings By The Seine invites readers to imagine the Seine not merely as a river but as a living archive of France’s architectural and cultural memory.