History of the Book seminar - John Murray's Handbooks for Travellers

Barbara Schaff (University of Goettingen)
Friday March 27 (1-2pm)
5th Floor seminar room,
Edinburgh University Library

In the course of the nineteenth century, the Murray Handbooks were embraced by the British middle classes as exemplary manuals model for tourists, thereby helping to normalise a certain kind of cultured and educated travel practice. Amongst other things, the seminar on Friday will discuss John Murray's invention of the new format of the tourist guidebook and its long lasting cultural relevance. It will also address Murray's competition with Baedeker.

Barbara Schaff is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Studies at Göttingen University. In 2006-07 she held a Caledonian Research Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh at the Centre for the History of the Book for her research on the John Murray Handbooks.