The History of Guidebooks
Travel Blog • Jim Benning • 11.16.05 | 11:24 PM ET
Written Road today pointed to good read in the Sydney Morning Herald about the history of guidebooks. Written by Andrew Bain, a former Lonely Planet editor, the story traces their history back to “Descriptions of Greece,” the oldest surviving guidebook, written in about 160 A.D. for wealthy Romans.
Bain quotes Tony Perrottet, author of Pagan Holiday and the World Hum story The Joy of Steam, who told him: 
“To modern readers, it’s pretty eye-glazing stuff - reading the ‘Description’ is like wading through a swamp. There are fascinating gems of information in there but they get lost in the endless digression on mythological themes, and the stultifying and arcane asides on the minutiae of Greek history.”
The story opens with a wild tale about the power of guidebooks:
For six weeks through the spring of 1942, the German Luftwaffe flew a series of bombing raids across England that targeted the cities of Exeter, Bath, Norwich, York and Canterbury. More than 1400 people were killed and 50,000 homes destroyed, yet the blitz struck at nothing of strategic importance, only places of great beauty.
“The Luftwaffe will go for every building which is marked with three stars in Baedeker,” a German officer declared of the attacks that would be remembered by history as the “Baedeker Blitz”. Not for the last time were guidebooks blamed for destroying the fabric of a pretty town.
Scary.
Related on World Hum:
* Lonely Planet at 30
* September 11 Makes its Way into New York Guidebooks
* “Sales of Guidebooks to Afghanistan Have Not Been Strong”
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Jim Benning is the editor and co-founder of World Hum.
