Leisure, Travel and Mass Culture: The History of Tourism

This resource presents a multi-national journey through well-known, little-known and far-flung destinations unlocked for the average traveller between 1850 and the 1980s. Guidebooks and brochures, periodicals, travel agency correspondence, photographs and personal travel journals provide unique insight into the expansion, accessibility and affordability of tourism for the masses and the evolution of some of the most successful travel agencies in the world.

Material is sourced from a range of geographically representative special collections across the United States as well as from the Thomas Cook archive and the National Archive in the United Kingdom.  Central themes include hospitality and entertainment, health travel, women and tourism, urban tourism, road, rail and air travel, and the business of tourism.