Baedeker's & Murray's Feedback
Thanks for the emails regarding posts on vintage travel guide resources. Please note that any valuations on your Baedekers, Murrays, Meyers, Muirheads, etc. are only estimates.
Random commentary about books,book selling and book collecting.
Thanks for the emails regarding posts on vintage travel guide resources. Please note that any valuations on your Baedekers, Murrays, Meyers, Muirheads, etc. are only estimates.
A collector recently asked for some good reference sources on Baedeker's travel guides and Murray's Hand-Books. The best resource on English Language editions of Baedekers is Baedeker's Guidebooks : A Checklist of English Language Editions 1861 - 1939 by John R. Gretton ( Dereham Books ). The best overall reference book on Baedekers is Baedekers Reisehandbucher 1832 - 1944 by Alex Hinrichsen. A terrific book for Murray's collectors is A Bibliography of Murray's Handbooks For Travellers by William B. C. Lister ( Dereham Books UK ). A great website for collectors is http://bdkr.com .
A book buyer recently asked us to identify the first published travel guide. Well, the earliest travel guidebook that we could name was Descriptions of Greece by the Roman author Pausanias. Written in 160 AD for rich Roman tourists, Descriptions of Greece was a multi-volume guidebook that explored towns, temples and cultural sites in extraordinary detail. Amazingly, the archeologist Heinrich Schliemann reportedly used Pausanias' old guide to uncover ruins in Mycenae.
Thanks to "travelbug" for the comment on my recent posts regarding the history of the Baedeker's travel guide series. I do hope to follow up with future posts on other travel book series, especially Murray's & Cook's. As to your question on the value of your Murray's Switzerland and the Guide Treves, it depends on the year of publication, scarcity and of course condition. Please feel free to email me with the details on your guide books and scans or photos, and I'll try and give you an estimate of value.( ceruleanday@hotmail.com )
By the late 1850's, the Baedeker's catalog included more than a dozen German language titles, as well as five French language travel guides. The publication of French titles was a surprising move for Karl Baedeker, who famously complained to John Murray ( of the renowned British travel series ) that he disliked France and that he had never been to Paris.Still, handbooks from the French language series proved to be very popular with educated Americans, British and European travellers during the mid-19th century. Baedeker also filled the gaps in his own catalog by acting as a distributor for Murray's Handbooks in Germany.
The history of the legendary Baedeker's Handbook for Travellers guide book series is inextricably tied to the history of the Family Baedeker. The story began in the late 17th century with Dietrich Baedeker, who established a printing shop in Bielefeld, Germany. In 1827, 24 year-old Karl Baedeker openned his own publishing house in Koblenz. By 1832, the ambitious Baedeker bought-out the publishing company of Friedrich Roehling, which specialized in tourist guide books, and immediately re-issued their popular handbook, "Rheinreise von Mainz bis Koln", and the rest, as they say, is history. Today, the name Baedeker has become both a synonym for a comprehensive travel guide book and a euphemism for any book that offers a thorough exploration of a subject.