For centuries, guidebooks happily have led the way

“MURRAY’S Handbook to France,” published in 1848, had some advice for pugnacious travelers: “Let them be especially cautious not to make use of their fists. No French magistrate will listen to any plea of provocation.”

That warning goes to show that guidebooks have been looking out for travelers for at least 150 years. Their appearance, tone and content have changed, but in a few cases, the direct descendants of some of the earliest series still are being published and the guidebook mission remains unchanged. Then, as now, no traveler in his right mind would take to the road without one of these helpful companions.

Before the 19th century, only the very wealthy went abroad, traveling with servants and letters of introduction that made guidebooks unnecessary. But with the Industrial Revolution, a new moneyed class emerged, and a broader spectrum of people, mostly French, English and German, began touring.

Travel guidebooks as we know them now were created to give those wayfarers a helping hand. John Murray of London, an eminent publishing company, printed the first travel guide, “A Hand Book for Travellers in Holland, Belgium and North Germany” in 1836, quickly followed by books on other European destinations. Murray’s small, dun-colored volumes outlined prime tourist routes, with erudite descriptions written by scholars.

Three years later, Karl Baedeker brought out handbooks for German-speaking visitors to Holland and Belgium, giving birth to a guidebook dynasty that lasted into the 21st century. So successful were they that “Baedeker” came to mean guidebook. The red-covered books, published in Germany by Baedeker and then his three sons, Ernst, Karl Jr. and Fritz, introduced a star rating system for must-see sights.

By 1900, anyone who aspired to sophistication traveled through Europe. Thomas Cook had begun taking tour groups to Egypt; Baedeker had come out with a handbook on the U.S.; and a host of new guidebook series started appearing, including Britain’s Ward Lock Shilling Guides for hoi polloi; Michelin guides, given free to pioneering motor tourists; the French Guides Bleus; and -- just to make things confusing -- the Blue Guides, founded in 1915 by two Scottish brothers, Findlay and James Muirhead.

The Murray guidebooks passed through a chain of publishers in the 20th century. By the 1960s, only the Murray “Handbook to India” was still being reprinted.

Baedeker’s Leipzig, Germany, headquarters was destroyed by English bombs during World War II and the descendants sold the company, with the moniker going to the publisher Langenscheidt and later to the Allianz insurance company, both German. Several American publishers distributed Baedekers in the U.S., including Fodor’s until January 2005. Now if you want a Baedeker, you’ll have to buy a used or vintage one.

That’s fine with a small group of connoisseurs who love old travel guides and are willing to pay dearly for them. Lucinda Boyle, a vintage guidebook expert for Bernard J Shapero Rare Books in London, said an 1830s edition of Baedeker’s guide to northern Germany recently sold for about $7,000.

Not long ago, I found an 1880 edition of Murray’s two-volume handbook on Egypt at the Librairie Ulysse on the Ile St. Louis in Paris and briefly considered buying it for about $700. Catherine Domain, the shop’s owner, actually used it for a trip to Egypt. “It tells what people were seeing and thinking at the time. It’s like taking a trip within a trip,” she said.

Harriet Greenberg, owner of the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore in New York, attributes the continuing popularity of old Baedekers to their detailed maps and still accurate descriptions of tourist sites.

Aficionados ruefully compare contemporary guidebooks, which tend to focus on such practicalities as restaurants and hotels, to the venerable, educational Baedekers and Murrays.

“The quality of all guidebooks has gone down,” said Domain.

Annabel Barber and Thomas Howells, a British couple living in Budapest, Hungary, noticed the same decline in present-day guidebooks. They already owned the small, independent publishing firm Somerset House when they heard that the old Blue Guides line founded by the Muirhead brothers was for sale. So two years ago, they acquired it, moving its publication to Hungary, where printing costs are lower than in Britain.

While continuing to distribute a limited supply of old stock, they are revising five titles a year. (In the U.S., they are being distributed by W.W. Norton & Co.) The relaunched guides have color photos, maps and diagrams, better indexes and more white space, although the publishers wouldn’t dream of making any changes that would shock the old Muirheads.

“We still aspire to erudition, to putting what people see in a cultural and historical context,” Barber said. “Plenty of other series are better at providing practical tips, but we assume Blue Guide readers are savvy enough to get around on their own.”

That’s good news to me, because I seldom leave my apartment in the City of Light without my old “Blue Guide to Paris.” Barber and Howells are reworking that volume this year. I am sure the new version will tell me everything I need to know about the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, but I hope it will also warn travelers, as the first Murray’s Paris handbook did, about shockingly small portions in French restaurants.

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Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.