Lucy Honeychurch is nonplussed in E.M. Forster's A Room with a View when she finds herself "in Santa Croce with no Baedeker". Like her, generations of English tourists have been dependent on travel guides, whether for information on art history, or for practical advice. Nineteenth century manuals offered hints on everything from Japanese shoe-laces ("hippopotamus hide is best") to useful foreign phrases ("Are the postilions insolent?") Jonathan Keates is the acclaimed author of books on Venice and on Stendhal (the French Romantic author who was so overcome by the glories of Florence that he suffered a breakdown, giving his name to "Stendhal syndrome"). Keates's lively cultural history of the guide-book, based on his own unparalleled collection, shows that the English have always revealed most about themselves when abroad.
- ISBN10 1907903038
- ISBN13 9781907903038
- Publish Date 22 November 2012 (first published 28 April 2011)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Notting Hill Editions
- Format eBook
- Pages 160
- Language English