THE FASHIONABLE TOUR; OR, A TRIP TO THE SPRINGS, NIAGARA, QUEBECK, AND BOSTON, IN THE SUMMER OF 1821. Saratoga Springs: Printed and Published by G. M. Davison, 1822. 13x7.2 cm (small 12mo), pp. [1-6] 7165 [166: blank]. contemporary (publisher's?) full suede. First edition. The first travel guide to use the phrase "fashionable tour" in its title and the first American tourist guidebook. In 1822, Gideon Davison (1791-1869), a printer and prominent citizen in Saratoga Springs, New York, published THE FASHIONABLE TOUR; OR, A TRIP TO THE SPRINGS, NIAGARA, QUEBECK, AND BOSTON, IN THE SUMMER OF 1821, offering a new type of travel guide that combined the travel narrative and road book. Historians consider this book to be the first American tourist guidebook. Davison "proved highly influential," writes historian Will B. Mackintosh, with his "particular combination of geographical facts and figures, landscape description, brief historical sketches, and practical route information in distance charts and timetables." According to Davison, he wrote and published the guide "that it might serve the purpose of a small pocket volume of references, such facts only have been collected as will render it more particularly interesting to the tourist." Sarasota Springs was already a destination when Davison's tourist guide was published and over time became the largest mineral springs resort in the U.S. Howes D-143. Sabin 18909 and 76915. Front free endpaper detached, binding and pages worn and stained, still a sound, very good copy. A nice example overall. This first edition is quite scarce. (#173989).
Price: $750.00
No statement of printing.