Crafting a “Species of Literature”: John Murray’s Multidisciplinary, Polyvocal Handbooks for Travellers

Abstract:The commercial and cultural success of the nineteenth-century travel guidebooks Murray’s Handbooks for Travellers to the Continent is an invitation to trace the series’ origins and closely consider their composition. This article relies on the John Murray Archive to make the case that Murray’s Handbooks were polyvocal, multidisciplinary texts. The myth this article scrutinizes, in other words, is not that of Murray as Founding Father of the guidebook, or the preeminence of his series over other tourist products or names within the shifting Victorian travel landscape, but rather that of Murray as a single entity, as “author” at all. The story of the Handbooks’ assembly engages with conversations about literary networks, collaborative authorship, publishing practice, and, ultimately, genre.