Guide book

A guide book or travel guide is a special book that helps visitors learn about a place they are visiting. These books tell readers about interesting sights, places to stay, good food, and fun things to do. They often include maps and stories about the place’s history and culture.

Guide books come in many types, each focusing on something different. Some are for people who love adventure travel, while others help those who want to relax. There are also guide books for travelers with different budgets or special diets.

Besides printed books, travel guides can also be found online as websites. These digital guides give the same helpful information, making it easy for anyone to plan their trip and learn about new places.

History

Antiquity

A forerunner of the guidebook was the periplus, an itinerary listing ports along a coast. A periplus such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manuscript that listed ports and landmarks with distances between them. This work was possibly written in the middle of the 1st century CE. It served the same purpose as the later Roman itinerarium.

The periegesis, or "progress around" was a common literary style during the Hellenistic age. A lost work by Agaclytus describing Olympia is mentioned by the Suda and Photius. Dionysius Periegetes wrote a description of the world in Greek hexameter verse. He wrote for travelers, not tourists, and worked in Alexandria around the time of Hadrian. An early guidebook was the Hellados Periegesis (Descriptions of Greece) by Pausanias from the 2nd century A.D. This book is a guide to interesting places, buildings, and customs of Ancient Greece, and is still useful today. With the rise of Christianity, guides for European religious pilgrims became common. An early example is from the pilgrim Egeria, who visited the Holy Land in the 4th century CE and left a detailed journey record.

In the medieval Arab world, guide books for travelers searching for artifacts and treasures were written by treasure hunters, magicians, and alchemists. This was especially true in Arab Egypt, where people looked for valuable ancient Egyptian items. Some books claimed to have magic that could remove barriers protecting these artifacts.

Travelogues

Travel writing became popular during the Song dynasty (960–1279) of medieval China. This type of writing was called 'travel record literature' (youji wenxue), and was often written in narrative, prose, essay and diary styles. Writers like Fan Chengda (1126–1193) and Xu Xiake (1587–1641) included lots of geographical and topographical details in their work. The 'daytrip essay' Record of Stone Bell Mountain by the poet and statesman Su Shi (1037–1101) had a philosophical and moral message.

In the West, guidebooks grew from the personal experiences of aristocrats on the Grand Tour. As appreciation for art, architecture and history became important for noble education, these topics became main parts of guidebooks, especially those about Italy. Richard Lassels (1603–1668) wrote guides that were later published as The Voyage of Italy. Grand Tour guidebooks were popular in the eighteenth century, with books like Patrick Brydone's A Tour Through Sicily and Malta being read by many who never traveled.

Between 1626 and 1649, the Dutch publisher Officina Elzeviriana (House of Elzevir) published a popular series called the Respublicae Elzevirianae (Elzevirian Republics). Each book gave information about a country in Europe, Africa, the Near East or the Far East.

An important change from the personal style of Grand Tour travel books to more factual guidebooks was Mariana Starke. Her 1824 guide to travel in France and Italy became essential for British travelers in the early 19th century. She wrote for families and budget travelers, giving advice on luggage, passports, food prices, accommodation, and even caring for sick family members. She also created a system of exclamation mark ratings [!], an early version of today’s star ratings. Her books, published by John Murray, became models for later guides.

In the United States, the first published guidebook was Gideon Minor Davison's The Fashionable Tour, published in 1822, followed by Theodore Dwight's The Northern Traveller and Henry Gilpin's The Northern Tour, both from 1825.

Modern guidebook

The modern guidebook began in the 1830s, as more people traveled long distances. The publisher John Murray started the Murray's Handbooks for Travellers in London from 1836. These books covered places to visit in Europe, Asia and northern Africa, and introduced the idea of "sights" rated by stars. Scholar James Buzard said the Murray style showed careful planning, which was important for the growing travel industry and British business generally.

In Germany, Karl Baedeker bought a publishing house that in 1828 had published a travel handbook by Professor Johannes August Klein called Rheinreise von Mainz bis Cöln; ein Handbuch für Schnellreisende (A Rhine Journey from Mainz to Cologne; A Handbook for Travellers on the Move). Baedeker published this book for ten years with small changes. After Klein died, Baedeker published a new edition in 1839 with his own ideas about what a travel guide should include. Baedeker wanted to give travelers all the information they needed, including routes, transport, places to stay, restaurants, tipping, sights, walks and prices. Baedeker copied John Murray’s style but added even more details.

In 1846, Baedeker added star ratings for sights, attractions and places to stay, following Mrs. Starke and Murray. This edition was his first "experimental" red guide. He also called his guides "handbooks", like John Murray III. Baedeker’s early guides had tan covers, but from 1856, they used Murray’s red covers and gold letters, which became famous for their clear, detailed and accurate information.

Baedeker and Murray made guides that were impersonal and factual; earlier guides mixed facts with personal feelings. The books by Baedeker and Murray helped create the personal travelogue, which no longer needed to act as a guide. The Baedeker and Murray guidebooks were very popular and were standard travel resources into the 20th century. As William Wetmore Story said in the 1860s, "Every Englishman abroad carries a Murray for information, and a Byron for sentiment."

After Karl Baedeker died, his son, also named Karl, took over the business but was killed in World War I. British feelings against Germany led some people to say Baedeker guides helped the German war effort, so their popularity in the United Kingdom fell. Two editors of Baedeker’s English guides left and took the rights to Murray’s Handbooks. They made the Blue Guides, different from the red Baedekers, and these became a major guidebook series through much of the 20th century and are still published today.

Post-WW2

After World War II, two new names appeared who mixed European and American views on international travel. Eugene Fodor, a Hungarian-born author of travel articles, who moved to the United States before the war, wrote guidebooks introducing English readers to Europe. Arthur Frommer, an American soldier in Europe during the Korean War, used his travel experiences for Europe on $5 a Day (1957), showing budget travel options in Europe. Both authors started series of guidebooks that grew to cover many parts of the world.

Since then, Let's Go, Lonely Planet, Insight Guides, Rough Guides, Eyewitness Travel Guides and many other travel guide series have been published.

For specific activities

Special books called climbing guidebooks help people who like to climb mountains, go rock climbing, or walk on hills. These books give important information for places like in Britain. Famous guides by W A Poucher are very popular there. There are also many guides made by the Climbers Club for different climbing spots.

There are travel guides made just for places where people like to dive underwater. These guides can be found in magazines, books, or on websites. They often tell readers about dive sites close to places that help divers.

Digital world

With digital technology, many guidebooks are now available online or as downloads for devices like PDA or iPod. This helps keep the information fresh and up-to-date. Well-known guidebooks like Lonely Planet, Frommers, Rough Guides, and In Your Pocket City Guides, along with newer ones like Schmap or Ulysses Travel Guides, now offer guides for download. Websites such as Tripadvisor, Wikivoyage, and Travellerspoint let travelers share their own tips and experiences. Wikivoyage, CityLeaves, and Travellerspoint allow users to update their guides and share the information freely as open content.

Guide book publishers

This is a list of some publishers of guide books in the English language. They make books to help visitors and tourists learn about places they are visiting. The books tell readers about interesting sights, places to stay, restaurants, how to get around, and fun activities. Many of these publishers also add maps and information about the history and culture of the places they write about.