Grand Tours and Cooks' Tours: A History of Leisure Travel, 1750 to 1915

In this entertaining and illuminating history of more than 150 years of travel, Withey (Voyages of Discovery: Captain Cook and the Exploration of the Pacific) traces the transition from the lengthy, expensive expeditions of the wealthy to brief and relatively low-cost trips for the middle class. Before the advent of railroads, getting almost anywhere required leisure, money and a willingness to endure major discomfort. Crossing the Channel could take a day; getting from Paris to Lyons several days or even weeks; and crossing the Alps was a frightening expedition, in which travelers were carried over mountain passes in a litter. Transportation was crude and erratic, luxury accommodations were scarce and the food was unfamiliar. But before mass transit and television helped to homogenize the world, travel was a high adventure into the exotic, and a ""wanderjahr""--a year spent seeing the world before settling down--was a social prerequisite for the sons of the rich. With the advent of railroads, Thomas Cook, a British temperance preacher and cabinetmaker, conceived the idea that workers might share the broadening effects of travel. Beginning in 1841, he persuaded carriers to discount fares in exchange for large numbers of passengers. Thus was born group tourism, with its cheap day trips and short vacations for the masses, changing the nature of travel, even for the wealthy. Withey fills her account with intriguing details of the trials and rewards of travel in Europe and the U.S. from the 18th century to the close of the 19th, including choice observations from such famous travelers as Boswell, Goethe, Dickens, Edith Wharton and Mark Twain. Photos not seen by PW. (Feb.)