Guide Books, Queries – Publishers and Authors: Mariana Starke, Baedeker, Murray, Ward & Lock, Wainwright ... late 1700s to mid 1900s

Life does take us on ‘funny’ travels ... I have just come back from Cornwall with a car load from my mother’s flat – mostly books = that’s me now-a-days! I extracted three books from the melee, and will definitely post about the other two later on ... the third I knew would amuse my mother ... Ward, Lock and Co’s “Red Illustrated Guide Book” to St Ives, Carbis Bay and Western Cornwall – our part of the world.

I did start reading some of the ‘stories’ which she enjoyed – more of that anon. But as I started to write this post – I wondered about Ward and Lock, and then other travel writers (having Talli and Betsy in our midst) ... and how tour guides came about. Fortunately Wikipedia links them and, of course, provides other fascinating titbits of information ...

Buxton in the Derbyshire Dales

Did you know that the idea of guide books dates back to the mid-7th to mid-13th century AD, when Arabic scholars of all trades contributed to recording and preserving earlier traditions, as well as adding inventions and innovations of their own, which then became best sellers in the medieval Arab world?

Though who would have thought that a woman would be the first to write a travel guide back in the late 1700s? Mariana Starke (1761 – 1838) was born in India, but on returning to England travelled out to Italy to nurse an ageing relative and it was during this time she realised the need for a travel guide or two.

For all of you authors sending out your ‘Queries’ .. Mariana Starke suffered the same fate – “she also wrote plays and poetry early in her career, but was discouraged by harsh reviews”; before she changed tack and realised the need for a different form of travel guide, than the architectural and scenic descriptive ones presently in vogue by those taking the Grand Tour.

Her guides were frequently revised and were the first to focus on practical information rather than descriptions of the places to be visited; her guide to travel in France and Italy served as an essential companion for British travellers to the continent in the early 1800s. She also devised a system of !!! exclamation mark ratings – a forerunner of today’s “stars”. She had established the genre and the template for future guides.

The French author Stendhal in ‘La Chartreuse de Parme’ refers to a travelling British historian who: “never paid for the smallest trifle without first looking up its price in the Travels of a certain Mrs Starke, a book which ... indicates to the prudent Englishman the cost of a turkey, an apple, a glass of milk and so forth”.

The French writer Marie-Henri Behle (1783 - 1842) better known by his pen name 'Stendhal'.

The genre was further developed by Karl Baedeker in Germany (1835) and Starke’s English publisher, John Murray III (1836). These two organisations produced impersonal, objective guides – rather than the factual information and personal sentimental reflections of previous works.

The London publishing house of Murray’s grandfather, John Murray I, (sounds more American than Scottish .. with the I, II and III) was renowned for its roster of authors ... including Jane Austen, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Byron, Charles Darwin to name a few.

William Wetmore Story (1819 – 1895) was an American sculptor, art critic, poet and editor, who lived in Rome from 1850 and was intimate with the Brownings and with Walter Savage Landor, whose critical acclaim as a writer and poet was not matched by public popularity.

Story said in the 1860s “Every Englishman abroad carries a Murray for information, and a Byron for sentiment, and finds out by them what he is to know and feel by every step”.

Baedekers crop up in E M Forster’s “A Room with a View”, D H Lawrence’s travelogue “Sea and Sardinia”, which includes references to the Baedeker guide he used when he travelled from Sicily to Sardinia and back, as do many others ...

First edition cover for Lawrence's "Sea and Sardinia"

Messrs Ward and Lock started their publishing concern in 1854, and in the 1880s purchased Shaw’s widely-known and well-established series of tourist guides – the precursor to the named Red Guides, known as the “Illustrated Guide Books”.

Baedekers’ English Guides eventually became the Blue Guides, after the Muirhead brothers, who had been responsible for the English versions, acquired the rights to John Murray’s Handbooks in 1918.

Other famous publications under Ward and Lock were The Fair Britain Series, Mrs Beeton’s Cookery Books, Mrs Beeton’s Household Management, Six Shilling Copyright Novels, Gardening Books, Wonder Books for Children.

They also published Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carrol, Nigel Tranter’s early novels and his westerns published under the pseudonym ‘Nye Tredgold’; the adventures of Simon Templar, alias “The Saint”, by the mystery fiction writer Leslie Charteris amongst others.

The Saint Character

Now we’re into the time after World War Two when travel became much more ubiquitous and many different guides started appearing – and I’m sure we all have our favourites. Probably worth mentioning here within the genre of my post are the Wainwright Guides – Alfred Wainwright’s seven volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, along with his walking guides have become standard reference works.

Persistency is one of the traits for an author – n’est pas? – Wainwright (1907 – 1991) exhibits this feature ... as he planned the precise scope and content of the seven volumes from the start, and worked conscientiously and meticulously on the series for the next 13 years at an average rate of one page per evening! (The wright part of his name fits perfectly .... “wright” in its archaic form means a worker or maker, while “wain” means a large wagon for farm use ...).

Book One of Wainwright's Pictorial Guide

These Guides are much prized today – as they show us how our country has changed, giving us an inkling of times gone by – but which are ideal for ‘fireside’ discussions where the memory still covers that era, or research purposes.

I leave you with a few paragraphs from Ward Lock & Co’s site, which I found interesting .. and again gives a glimpse of our past:

According to the book Adventure in Publishing, The House Of Ward Lock, 1854 to 1954, by Edward Liveing, Ward and Lock "noted the public’s growing tendency to explore the British Isles. The ubiquity of the railway lines had played its part in the growth of the travel at holiday times and the increasingly popular “weekend”.

At Easter, Cornwall was the resort of the well-to-do; in August of working class folk. The Lake District was thronged with families in the summer who climbed its fells without any of the fears that prevented their ancestors from doing so a century earlier.

Women took to walking after the passing of crinolines. Also, like their men-folk, they had taken to bicycling when the two low-wheel of machine supplanted the perilous “penny-farthing”. The tandem, too, came into fashion and added its touch of romantic adventure to this form of self-propelled travel."

"All this growing zest for travel required catering for in more ways than in the provision of food and lodging. And so it came about that in 1896 Ward Lock and Bowden Ltd. Introduced their series of 72 Guide Books to the British Isles.

The early “guides” were issued in green paper boards – not as we know them today in their familiar red cloth covers – and were priced at a shilling. Gradually a great series was worked up until, as today, every holiday district and seaside resort of consequence was covered by its own particular Guide.

A special staff of qualified editors and correspondents continually toured the land, compiling and revising material on all places and matters of interest to the holidaymaker and on such subjects as the local history, geology, botany and zoology of the areas concerned."

Illustration of Wordsworth's Grave 1895 (see Runela site)

This summary by Edward Liveing seemed to me to say so much and remind us of things we so easily forget.

Dear Mr Postman .. my mother was really ‘with it’ and awake when we talked about St Ives and Carbis Bay, so I’m pleased I found her book and can now read to her from it. She is pleased ‘her Janice’ is back from her visits to Brazil, Australia and California; however it’s good to have Susie and Andy as back-ups ...they all work together at the Natural Fitness Centre – so suit us well!

She asks about the blog and I think would be amazed to know this is the end of its 2nd year ... and the 291st post ... so I look forward to another blogging year – perhaps more settled and a little more organised ....

Hilary Melton-Butcher
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