I’m a great fan of guidebooks. So, I recently decided to do some reading on the history of guidebooks.

The first guidebook in the U.S. was prepared by 29 year-old Gideon Minor Davison in 1822. The book covered the area around Saratoga Springs, New York, which was the hit tourist destination of the day. He titled his book, The Fashionable Tour. There’s the typical image that travel in the early 19th century was done mostly by the elite, the wealthy, those who had spare time on their hands. Yet, Davison was quite the opposite. He was a working man who printed the town’s newspaper, the Saratoga Sentinel.

Despite the subtitle of his book – A trip to the Springs, Niagara,
Quebeck, and Boston, in the Summer of 1821 – Davison was not much of a traveler. His aim, along with that of much of Saratoga’s citizenry, was to promote tourism in that area.

Saratoga Springs was becoming the most promoted destination for travel in North America and Davison aimed to capitalize on that interest with his inexpensive, pocket-sized guidebook.

As a printer Davison knew how to keep production costs at a minimum. Despite being a travel guide, the book contained no illustrations or maps. It took Davison a while to develop his bookselling sense. The first edition was sold mainly through his shop in Saratoga Springs.

Later, there would be many later editions of this book that in 1833 started to be published under the title Traveller’s Guide Through the Middle and Northern States. French editions even appeared in 1834 and 1839. These later editions contain maps and lithographed plates. The success of his guidebooks enabled Davison to build a significant fortune in Saratoga Springs.

For three years, from 1822 to 1825, Davison published the sole guidebook in the U.S. In future postings we’ll talk about some other guidebooks from the early 19th century.

Meanwhile, if you’re really interested in this topic a great read is
The First American Tourist Guidebooks: Authorship and the Print Culture of the 1820s by Richard Gassan, Book History – Volume 8, 2005, pp. 51-74.