Baedeker’s Guide: Great Britain 1890

The latter years of the Victorian era witnessed a massive expansion in the tourist industry. The advent of railways and better roads had, at last, made travel tolerable.

For previous generations serious travel had been restricted to the Grand Tour, the gentle and cultured aristocratic exploration of Europe but now, at the end of the nineteenth century, we find that the intrigue of travel has become a fascination for the new middle classes.

In 1890, apart from galleries, museums, a few zoos and the occasional glimpse of a stately home there were no attractions, so instead the early tourist visited Britain, all of it, delving into the character of the villages, market towns, cathedral cities and a countryside that had changed little for centuries. In great detail this book describes 72 tours to guide the Victorian holiday maker from The Isles of Scilly to Shetland. There is advice on money, travel and hotels as well as numerous street plans and coloured maps of popular tourist areas and the railway network.

If you seek out the old in your travels, whether for real or from the comfort of your armchair, this book remains perfectly valid. Use it to explore the past - what better way of doing so than with a very detailed contemporary guide book?

Hardback 672 pp. including 31 pages of coloured street plans and maps, and a fold out map of the railway network.