Cook's Travellers Handbooks Explained

Cook's Tourists' Handbooks were a series of travel guide books for tourists published in the 19th-20th centuries by Thomas Cook & Son of London. The firm's founder, Thomas Cook, produced his first handbook to England in the 1840s, later expanding to Europe, Near East, North Africa, and beyond. Compared with other guides such as Murray's, Cook's aimed at "a broader and less sophisticated middle-class audience." The books served to advertise Cook's larger business of organizing travel tours.^[1] The series continues today as Traveller Guides issued by Thomas Cook Publishing of Peterborough, England.^[2]

List of Cook's travel guides by geographic coverage

Belgium

• • • • • 1880 ed.

France

• Cook's Guide to Paris
  • • 1900 ed.
  • 1905 ed.

Great Britain

• Book: Handbook of the Trip to Liverpool . Leicester . T. Cook . 1845 . ^[3]
  • 1998 reprint
    • • • • 1905 ed.
  • 1911 ed.
  • 1921 ed.

Italy

• • • 1875 ed.
  • 1901 ed.
    • 1901 ed.
    • 1884 ed.

Netherlands

• • • • • 1880 ed.

New Zealand

• • • 1903 ed.

North Africa

• • Book: The Nile . 7th . Open Library . 1901 . E.A. Wallis Budge . T. Cook & Son (Egypt) Ltd. . E.A. Wallis Budge . + index
  • 1905 ed.
    • • + Index
  • 1911 ed.
  • 1921 ed.

Palestine and Syria

• Cook's Tourists' Handbook to Palestine and Syria 1876 edition

Scandinavia

• Cook's Handbook to Scandinavia
• Sweden
  • • + Index

Switzerland

• • • • • 1879 ed.
  • 1905 ed.
  • 1922 ed.

Syria

• + Index
  • + Index

See also

• Thomas Cook European Timetable

External links

• WorldCat. Thomas Cook Touring Handbooks

Notes and References

1. 'What Ought to Be Seen': Tourists' Guidebooks and National Identities in Modern Germany and Europe . Rudy Koshar . Journal of Contemporary History . 33 . 3 . 323–340 . July 1998 . 261119 .
2. Web site: Thomas Cook Publishing/Thomas Cook Tour Operations Ltd. . Peterborough, England . Traveller Guides . 26 August 2013 . https://web.archive.org/web/20110131201400/http://www.thomascookpublishing.com/TravellerGuides . 31 January 2011 . dead .
3. Railways, Hotels, and Tourism in Great Britain 1839-1914 . Jack Simmons . Journal of Contemporary History . 19 . 2 . 201–222 . 1984 . 260593 . 10.1177/002200948401900203 . 162240939 .