PART III - Travelling: Edinburgh and the Nation

Summary

The later decades of the eighteenth century saw effortsto improve Scottish roads and transportinfrastructure. Publications about Scottish roadsand transport infrastructure also proliferated inthis period. Information on stagecoach times,horse-hire services, road surface quality, scenictourist routes and even the best roadsideaccommodation and refreshment options throughout thecountry could be acquired from the Edinburghbooksellers. Dozens of different Scottish‘travelling dictionaries’, ‘traveller's guides’,‘traveller's companions’, travel magazines and roadatlases were on the bookshop's shelves. Especiallypopular in Edinburgh throughout the period wasGeorge Taylor and Andrew Skinner's Survey and Maps of the Roads of NorthBritain, or Scotland (1776; updated andexpanded edition, 1790). The booksellers sold 149copies of this portable, foldable collection ofstrip-maps conveniently orientated to thetraveller's perspective. It was a book made totravel. The travel writer Sarah Murray bought botheditions (see Chapter 11). Some customers wanted it‘in a roll’ or in a soft, flexible ‘red sheephide’binding to maximise portability. Those setting outfrom Edinburgh who wanted added portablefunctionality could also buy The Traveller's Pocket Book or an Abstract ofTaylor and Skinner's Survey of the Roads ofScotland, Shewing the Distance from Edinburgh inMiles and Furlongs (1776). Several buyerswere tourists staying at Edinburgh hotels. Alsopopular were John Knox's Commercial Map of Scotland; with the Roads,Stages and Distances (1782) and JohnAinslie's Travelling Map ofScotland Shewing the Distances from One Stage toAnother (1783), which made travelplanning easier and depicted an interconnectednation. These travelling maps were often mounted onlinen and sold in a pocket-sized travel case. Knox'smap identified the route of ‘the short Tour ofScotland, abounding in picturesque Scenery’. Thistourist route began in Edinburgh, and Knox laterfollowed part of it in his Tourthrough the Highlands of Scotland and the HebrideIsles (1786).

Accounts of Scottish tours – which represented a newand emerging genre in the 1770s but were seen ashackneyed and clichéd by the start of the nineteenthcentury – were among the booksellers’ bestsellers.More than 250 Scottish travel books by eighteendifferent authors passed through the shop, includingSamuel Johnson's Journey to theWestern Islands of Scotland (1775;thirty-seven copies sold) and James Boswell'sJournal of a Tour to theHebrides (1785; fifteen copies sold).