Little Red and Black Books: Black's and Murray's Guidebooks to Scotland, 1850-1914.

Date

2013-01-09

Authors

Cormack, Grayson Wade

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Publisher

University of Guelph

Abstract

Recent studies exploring the history of Scottish tourism have neglected to critically analyse nineteenth-century guidebooks, although they are frequently-used sources. Nineteenth-century guidebooks to Scotland are a window into the complex negotiations between actors within a burgeoning mass tourist sector, including the publishers that supplied travellers with information and advice in the form of maps, illustrations and the printed word. This thesis offers a comparative analysis of Black’s Picturesque Tourist of Scotland and Handbook for Travellers in Scotland, revealing how sources often dismissed as ephemera constituted complex, multi-media, intertextual products. Examining, in turn, the history of modern guidebook publishing and cartography, the evolution of the guidebook preface, the incorporation of a rich visual culture within the volumes, and the formatting of proposed ‘tours’, this study suggests that there were distinctive features of each series that reflected broader editorial strategies and underscore how, as sources, historians must understand the particular features and intended functions of each volume, rather than aggregating them without attention to the variety of formats and texts encompassed within the genre.

Description

Keywords

Scottish tourism, Nineteenth-century guidebooks, Mass tourist sector, Publishers, Editorial strategies

Citation