The Baedeker Guide
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Stories Going by the book: the Baedeker guide ‘Kings and governments may err, but their servants to arrange things, and letters the chagrin of Murray — had become the never Mr Baedeker’. (AP Herbert, 1929) of introduction to other people whose eponym for the continental guidebook. In servants would also arrange things. Murray 1872 the firm moved to Leipzig, the capital of Once Napoleon had been removed from the and Baedeker, recognising a new market, German publishing. Every few years it would scene in 1815, hordes of travellers produced distinctive standardised issue a new handbook, each surveying some descended on the roads of Europe, which guidebooks designed to fit in the hand or vast new region of the globe: Palestine and had been greatly improved by the armies travelling bag (16 x 11 cm): they were Syria 1875, Lower Egypt 1877, Sweden and under his command. Their vehicle of choice regularly updated, used a star system to Norway 1879, Russia 1883, France was the diligence or public stagecoach, rank sights, advised on tipping and other 1884 –1885, Great Britain 1887, Upper Egypt which allowed travellers not quite wealthy traps for the unwary (‘A porter in Mannheim 1891, US 1893, and so on, arriving with a enough to afford their own landau a means should receive 12 kreuzer for carrying a guide to India on the dawn of the First World of getting down to Italy, or even up to the trunk weighing more than 40 pounds, War in 1914. Like many German firms, its mountains of Switzerland, which after 8 kreuzer for one weighing less’), and patriotism got the better of it, and it found centuries of being viewed as the whims or generally allowed the tourist to dispense itself in even worse company after 1933 (the monstrosities of nature had suddenly with actual human guides, who wanted their term used for Hermann Goering’s bombing become fashionable. groschen too. Baedeker’s thrift was missions to flatten some of the culturally On their lap, these lone travellers would proverbial; and grateful tourists wrote to him significant towns in the UK was ‘Baedeker have a red Baedeker volume. His aim, he from all over Europe to thank him for raids’). The firm was able to resume stated, was to protect the traveller from protecting the virtue of their wallets. publishing again in 1948, but never again unwanted molesters, touts, and Emulated by many other guidebooks (and enjoyed the same universal reputation for undesirables, ‘to render him independent, not just guidebooks) since, the star system reliability and probity. The market had and to place him in a position from which he shaped the notion that there was a traveller’s changed; and the world too. The confidence may receive his own impressions with clear canon of sights that, come what may, had to and fixed world view of the 19th century had eyes and lively heart’ ( Deutschland , 8th edn, be seen. Not everybody agreed with the gone, along with the rhetorical device known 1858). By the mid-19th century, a whole canon, however. Throughout Baedeker’s as the Baedeker parenthesis — bracketing industry of travel agents, guidebooks, tour lifetime, Mont Blanc earned no stars at all: without ironic intent an item of practical operators, hotels, and railways had sprung ‘The view from the summit is unsatisfactory’. information (‘small gratuity’) inside a poetic up to cater to these new travellers. Baedeker Karl Baedeker was almost excruciatingly description. No longer were guidebooks a was by no means the only name around: thorough, absolutely convinced of his own matter of the autonomous traveller out in the other notables included Byron’s publisher, rectitude (an opinion evidently shared by his world, casting a strategic eye on the Alpine John Murray, who was to fight a losing battle readers), and in the habit of visiting hotels landscapes and the churches with stars and with Baedeker through the 19th century for incognito. He had the reputation of never the people who served; in his or her place the guidebook market, and Thomas Cook, recommending a hotel unless he had seen it was the observer caught up in the act of the travel agent. Steam-driven ships linked first. Soon he was owning up to being not observation. The next line of successful Dover and Calais in 1821, and steamers just the publisher of, but the main researcher guidebooks made its name by suggesting began to ply the waters of the Rhine, Rhône, for his books too, ‘The entire contents of the that the planet itself was lonely, a conceit that and Danube a few years later. And when the book are based exclusively on personal would have been utterly opaque to Karl railways appeared 20 years later, the entire experience’. So popular were his books, and Baedeker. communications network of modern tourism such was his reputation for reliability that the was in place. German Kaiser Wilhelm was reputed to have Iain Bamforth Hundreds of volumes had been published stationed himself at a particular palace by enterprising travellers and publishers in window at noon because, ‘It’s written in FURTHER READING Second-hand copies of Baedeker’s guides can be found in the era of the Grand Tour. But by definition, Baedeker that I watch the changing of the good antiquarian bookstores everywhere: some are collector’s these books were idiosyncratic and guard from that window, and the people items (such as the 1934 German-language guide to Madeira and some of the early volumes by Karl Baedeker), but the tendentious, like Tobias Smollett’s bad- have come to expect it’. mass-produced, revised editions (such as Switzerland and tempered account of his travels in France After Baedeker’s death in 1859 his empire Northern Italy) are frequent, inexpensive, and have splendid folding maps of cities, mountain ranges, glaciers, and other and Italy, or its successor Sterne’s A passed to his three sons, and the authority of natural and cultural wonders. Sentimental Journey , which although a the founder gave way to editorial Parson N. Worth the detour: a history of the guidebook. Stroud: Sutton, 2007 highly entertaining read is entirely useless as bureaucracy. French and English translations a guidebook. People on the Grand Tour had appeared, and by 1880 Baedeker — much to DOI: 10.3399/bjgp10X544825 British Journal of General Practice, December 2010 947.