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268 guidebook
publishing houses of the last century such as
Murray and Baedeker, but these in turn were
derived from much earlier historical practices. De
Beer �1952) suggests four main traditions shaped
the evolution of the genre: geography and
history books, itineraries and road books, travellers'
narratives and guides to individual towns and
cities. Works of geography and history can be
traced back to classical times with books such as
Pausanias's Guidebook of Greece, and this tradition reemerged
in Renaissance Europe with major
accounts like Alberti's Descrittione di tutta Italia,
published in 1550, which combined history and
description. This general type of material had little
influence on the format of guidebooks, but had the
important ingredients of impersonality and comprehensive
coverage.
A more direct influence on the guidebook came
from itineraries and road books. Lists of places
along particular routes occurred in the Roman
Empire and were provided later for pilgrimage
routes to Rome, Jerusalem and other centres. The
increase of travel and trade in Europe provided a
growing secular market for itineraries. Charles
Estienne compiled a major collection of routes for
France in 1552, La Guide des Chemins de France, and
similar works later appeared for Germany and
elsewhere. Details of fairs, markets and currencies
were added to route information such as James
Wadworth's 1641 European Mercury, which outlined
routes and venues for trade on the continent. This
tradition thus contributed practical information to
the evolution of the guidebook.
Travellers' narratives form the third major
component of guidebook development. In fact,
early narratives often had sufficient factual information
to act as forms of guides. Early Grand
Tourists �see Grand Tour) frequently used the
published or unpublished journals of previous
visitors to help them on their journeys. The
drawback was that narratives lacked a systematic
and detailed approach for purely practical purposes.
Nevertheless, the popularity of travel
narratives in the later seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries demonstrated the demand for travel
literature and what forms of description were
appreciated.
Towns of particular importance had guidebooks
devoted to aspects of them from an early period. As
a centre for pilgrimage, Rome had the Mirabilia
from the twelfth century onwards, listing the
sights of the city together with an itinerary. Lists
of churches and relics were provided in the
Indulgentiae. From the sixteenth century, Rome's
religious attractions were supplemented by details
of its antiquities. Pompilio Totti's 1638 Ritralto di
Roma Moderna was fundamentally a secular guide.
By the early eighteenth century, many European
cities had guidebooks devoted to them, a tradition
which obviously continues to this day. The number
of guidebooks to countries also grew considerably.
Italy was especially important with early works
including FrancËois Schott's 1600 Itinerarium Italiae
and J.H. von Pflaumern's 1625 Mercurius Italicus.
France's first guidebook appeared in 1615, the
Itinerarium Galliae.
Major advances in guidebooks to countries
came with the enormous growth of travel in
Europe in the eighteenth century. Tourists required
both basic information and coverage of the art,
architecture and scenic wonders encountered while
abroad. Notable examples include Thomas Nugent's
Grand Tour �1749 and subsequent editions)
and Mariana Starke's 1802 Travels in Italy. The
latter utilised a star-ranking system for sights, a
method much employed by the Michelin Green
Guide today. These eighteenth-century guidebooks
firmly established the market for such productions
and combined itinerary with details of transport,
accommodation and costs together with the
description of places. They became increasingly
specialised and their practical information required
a system for updating editions. Thus, by 1800,
precursors of the modern guidebook were in place,
but they were still inadequate as basic up-to-date
practical tools. It was these deficiencies which led
to the main advances of the nineteenth century.
Two publishers may be said to have had a
decisive influence on the form and growth of
guidebooks in the nineteenth century: John Murray
and Karl Baedeker. Murray's 1836 Handbook for
Travellers on the Continent stemmed from personal
dissatisfaction with the guidebooks he encountered
on his own travels, which he found unsystematic
and insufficiently detailed. A significant development
was his use of other writers for his guidebook
series, most notably Richard Ford for the 1845
Handbook for Travellers in Spain. Another distinctive