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27917 text 02.qxp 7/9/08 1:24 PM Page 112 1 7 2 The First Tourist Guidebook War H ad Gideon Minor Davison’s 1822 tourist guide, The Fashion­ able Tour, not faced any competition, it would have been just a novelty and curiosity, destined to land into the dustbin of history. For three years, it was just about that.1 But the tourist fad in literature led others to Davison’s guide, and by 1825 two competitors had appeared. Like the authors of travel and tourism­related fiction, the new guidebook au­ thors hoped to create writing careers for themselves. Each author defined his book to appeal to distinct aspects of the market, thus revealing the growing factions that were already appearing among tourists. Gideon Davison had published the first edition of The Fashionable Tour as much to promote Saratoga as to further his own career as a publisher. Although the number printed was limited and Davison’s means of distri­ bution haphazard—there were no advertisements for it in the major news­ papers2 —we know that the book was highly influential for the two other guidebook authors of the 1820s, as they borrowed both the format and significant passages of the book. Both of the new guides were published in time for the 1825 tourism sea­ son, and both were written by authors who were roughly the same age as Davison. But these authors came from far more privileged stations than the Saratoga printer, and each in his way tried to target his text toward his own class: the traveling gentry. Each took a different slant, and as a result their texts reflected different aspects of gentry attitudes toward tourism. And both of these two young writers saw tourist­related writing as a way 112 27917 text 02.qxp 7/9/08 1:24 PM Page 113 113 The First Tourist Guidebook War to further nascent literary careers, indicating the scope and popularity of tourism by the mid­1820s. Theodore Dwight, the first of these two new authors, had lived a life far removed from the hard printer’s work of Gideon Davison’s experience. Dwight was the nephew of the late famed travel writer Timothy Dwight, which made him an exemplar of a particular wealthy, conservative New England tradition.3 He was raised in Connecticut and at the age of four­ teen entered Yale, where he studied under his uncle, whom he revered. Like his uncle, he had initially intended to continue his studies in theology after his graduation from Yale in 1814. Later accounts held that he was dis­ abled by disease, perhaps scarlet fever, and he was unable to continue. But if that is the case, he recovered quickly; by September of 1815 he was teach­ ing school in Northampton, Massachusetts.4 He never returned to college. For the next several years he had a continuing struggle with his health, which at least once, in 1816, forced him to return to his parents’ home in Hartford.5 Apparently still teaching in Northampton, in the summer of 1818 he found employment as an agent for John Trumbull’s subscription printing of a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence. He traveled from New York to Boston and eventually made his way out to Ballston and Saratoga Springs in search of subscribers.6 He probably became ill again in early 1820, and that summer he traveled to Europe, visiting Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and Holland in a vigorous pursuit of health.7 Dwight returned to the United States in 1821 and moved to New York City, where he began working at the offices of his father’s newspaper, the Daily Advertiser.8 At the same time, he began the heroic process of turning his uncle’s voluminous correspondence into the four volumes of Travels in New England, which was published from 1822 through 1824. He was also compiling his own travel notes into a manuscript, which appeared in 1824 as A Journal of a Tour in Italy, in the Year 1821.9 The book was a beautiful product, profusely illustrated with Dwight’s sketches and maps, so it must have been very expensive to produce and to buy. It was never reprinted.10 The same summer it was published, he traveled to the Springs. Al­ though his family had long made Ballston Spa its destination, in 1824 he went instead to Saratoga Springs, where he spent a long weekend in mid­ August...

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