Murray's Handbooks for Travellers

Portrait of publisher John Murray III, 19th century


Murray's Handbooks for Travellers were travel guide books published in London by John Murray beginning in 1836.[1] The series covered tourist destinations in Europe and parts of Asia and northern Africa. According to scholar James Buzard, the Murray style "exemplified the exhaustive rational planning that was as much an ideal of the emerging tourist industry as it was of British commercial and industrial organization generally."[2] The guidebooks became popular enough to appear in works of fiction such as Charles Lever's Dodd Family Abroad.[3] After 1915 the series continued as the Blue Guides and the familiar gold gilted red Murrays Handbooks published by John Murray London including the long running Handbook to India, Pakistan, Ceylon & Burma which concluded with the 21st edition in 1968 before changing from the original format of 1836 to a more modern paperback edition of 1975.



Cover of Handbook for Travellers in Turkey, 1871
  1. ^ Rudy Koshar (July 1998). "'What Ought to Be Seen': Tourists' Guidebooks and National Identities in Modern Germany and Europe". Journal of Contemporary History. 33.
  2. ^ James Buzard (Autumn 1991). "The Uses of Romanticism: Byron and the Victorian Continental Tour". Victorian Studies. 35.
  3. ^ James Buzard (January 1993). "A Continent of Pictures: Reflections on the "Europe" of Nineteenth-Century Tourists". PMLA. 108.