‘Arry and ‘Arriet ‘out on a spree’: trippers, tourists and travellers writing in late-Victorian visitors’ books

ABSTRACT Visitors’ books from British hotels and inns are a rich source of material for the historian of travel and tourism. With formal registration at hotels not compulsory until the outbreak of the First World War, visitors were largely free to choose when and what they wrote in these informal documents. They provide an insight into the attitude and sensibility of hotel guests at a time when expanded transport infrastructure, leisure time and disposable income allowed a larger section of society than ever before to take holidays. As relatively democratic and demotic texts, they provide a useful corrective to the anti-touristic rhetoric of more elite travel narratives. However, the performative and contingent nature of these texts also means they need to be treated with caution. This article examines the evidence from a range of visitors’ books to ask what these texts can tell us about the late-Victorian tourist.