Verlag Karl Baedeker, founded by Karl Baedeker on 1 July 1827, is a German publisher and pioneer in the business of worldwide travel guides. The guides, often referred to simply as "Baedekers", contain, among other things, maps and introductions; information about routes and travel facilities; and descriptions of noteworthy buildings, sights, attractions and museums, written by specialists.
Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel can also include relatively short stays between successive movements, as in the case of tourism.
The Grand Tour was the principally 17th- to early 19th-century custom of a traditional trip through Europe, with Italy as a key destination, undertaken by upper-class young European men of sufficient means and rank when they had come of age. The custom—which flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transport in the 1840s and was associated with a standard itinerary—served as an educational rite of passage. Though it was primarily associated with the British nobility and wealthy landed gentry, similar trips were made by wealthy young men of other Protestant Northern European nations, and, from the second half of the 18th century, by some South and North Americans.
Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the second century AD. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from his firsthand observations. Description of Greece provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology, which is providing evidence of the sites and cultural details he mentions although knowledge of their existence may have become lost or relegated to myth or legend.
Lonely Planet is a travel guide book publisher. Founded in Australia in 1973, the company has printed over 150 million books.
Karl Ludwig Johannes Baedeker was a German publisher whose company, Baedeker, set the standard for authoritative guidebooks for tourists.
The genre of travel literature or travelogue encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs.
Footprint Travel Guides is the imprint of Footprint Handbooks Ltd, a publisher of guidebooks based in Bath in the United Kingdom. Particularly noted for their coverage of Latin America, their South American Handbook, first published in 1924, is in its 90th edition and is updated annually. The company now publish more than 200 titles covering many destinations. Since 2008, all handbook guides are published in lightweight hardback.
Literary tourism is a type of cultural tourism that deals with places and events from literary texts as well as the lives of their authors. This could include visiting particular place associated with a novel or a novelist, such as a writer's home, or grave site, following routes taken by a fictional characters, visiting places mentioned in poems, as well as visiting museums dedicated to specific writers, works, regional literatures, and literary genres.
The Tough Guide to Fantasyland is a nonfiction book by the British author Diana Wynne Jones that humorously examines the common tropes of a broad swathe of fantasy fiction. The U.S. Library of Congress calls it a dictionary. However, it may be called a fictional or parodic tourist guidebook. It was first published by Vista Books (London) in 1996. A revised and updated edition was completed in 2006 and published by Penguin, first in the U.S.
Mariana Starke (1762–1838) was an influential English travel writer, though she also worked in other genres. She is best known for her travel guides to France and Italy, popular with British travellers to the Continent in the early nineteenth century. She wrote plays early in her career, before embarking on her first trip abroad in 1791. She worked as a translator over most of her working life, and latterly, also wrote poetry.
A Handbook for Travellers in Spain is an 1845 work of travel literature by English writer Richard Ford. It has been described as a defining moment in the genre.
The Blue Guides are a series of detailed and authoritative travel guidebooks focused on art, architecture, and archaeology along with the history and context necessary to understand them. A modicum of practical travel information, with recommended restaurants and hotels, is also generally included.
Christopher P. Baker is a professional travel writer and photographer, adventure motorcyclist, tour leader, and Cuba expert, and the 2008 Lowell Thomas Award 'Travel Journalist of the Year.' He is a contributor to magazines and other publications worldwide, and is the author of travel guidebooks for publishers such as Dorling Kindersley, Lonely Planet, Moon Publications, and National Geographic.
The American Guide Series includes books and pamphlets published from 1937 to 1941 under the auspices of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP), a Depression-era program that was part of the larger Works Progress Administration in the United States. The American Guide Series books were compiled by the FWP, but printed by individual states, and contained detailed histories of each of the then 48 states of the Union with descriptions of every major city and town. The series not only detailed the histories of the 48 states, but provided insight to their cultures as well. In total, the project employed over 6,000 writers. The format was uniform, comprising essays on the state's history and culture, descriptions of its major cities, automobile tours of important attractions, and a portfolio of photographs.
Murray's Handbooks for Travellers were travel guide books published in London by John Murray beginning in 1836. The series covered tourist destinations in Europe and parts of Asia and northern Africa. According to scholar James Buzard, the Murray style "exemplified the exhaustive rational planning that was as much an ideal of the emerging tourist industry as it was of British commercial and industrial organization generally." The guidebooks became popular enough to appear in works of fiction such as Charles Lever's Dodd Family Abroad. After 1915 the series continued as the Blue Guides and the familiar gold gilted red Murrays Handbooks published by John Murray London including the long running Handbook to India, Pakistan, Ceylon & Burma which concluded with the 21st edition in 1968 before changing from the original format of 1836 to a more modern paperback edition of 1975.
Harper's Hand-Book for Travellers (est.1862) was a series of travel guide books published by Harper & Brothers of New York. Each annual edition contained information for tourists in Europe and parts of the Middle East. The "indefatigable" William Pembroke Fetridge wrote most of the guides from 1862 until at least 1885. In its day the Harper's Hand-Book competed with popular guides such as Baedeker, Bradshaw's, and Murray's. In 1867 critic William Dean Howells found Harper's Hand-Book "chatty and sociable." Readers included Lucy Baird, daughter of Spencer F. Baird.
Appletons' travel guide books were published by D. Appleton & Company of New York. The firm's series of guides to railway travel in the United States began in the 1840s. Soon after it issued additional series of handbooks for tourists in the United States, Europe, Canada and Latin America.
Cook's Tourists' Handbooks were a series of travel guide books for tourists published in the 19th-20th centuries by Thomas Cook & Son of London. The firm's founder, Thomas Cook, produced his first handbook to England in the 1840s, later expanding to Europe, Near East, North Africa, and beyond. Compared with other guides such as Murray's, Cook's aimed at "a broader and less sophisticated middle-class audience." The books served to advertise Cook's larger business of organizing travel tours. The series continues today as Traveller Guides issued by Thomas Cook Publishing of Peterborough, England.
James Fullarton Muirhead (1853-1934) was a Scottish editor and writer of travel guides, associated with the Baedeker publishing house for many years, prior to starting his own publishing house.
