Grand Tour

Global travel can be a wearying business: mass tourism, overcrowded planes, chaotic airports, heightened security, cookie-cutter hotel chains, well-worn tourist trails. Finding even a sliver of adventure can sometimes feel impossible. But take heart: for all of us with an unfulfilled spirit of wanderlust, The Golden Age of Travel evokes an era when traveling the world was a thrilling new possibility for those with the resources, time, imagination, and daring.

This richly illustrated volume charts the travel heyday of 1869 to 1939. Bedecked with ephemera and precious turn-of-the-century photochroms, it follows six classic tours favored by Western adventurers in the prewar era, including such famous traveler-writers as Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mark Twain, and Goethe. From the Grand Tour of Europe, a traditional rite of passage for young English aristocrats, to the Far East, barely touched by Western influence, to the famous Trans-Siberian Railway, we follow each journey through its itinerant stops and various modes of transport: trains, boats, cars, planes, horses, donkeys, and camels.

With pages brimming with archival travel posters, guides, tickets, leaflets, brochures, menus, and luggage stickers, the book evokes all the romance, elegance, not to mention the sheer sense of novelty, that enthralled these golden-age passengers. Through decadent new cities, or wild, rugged terrains, this is your passport to a long-lost epoch of adventure and wide-eyed wonder at the world.

“Countless travel books have charted the so-called ‘golden age’ of travel, but none are quite as epic as this hefty tome.”
— National Geographic Traveller